


The Doctor's Children

by calgarry



Category: Doctor Who, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-02-11 14:07:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2071206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calgarry/pseuds/calgarry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which John and Harry Watson aren’t quite human. Or from Earth. And they both picked up their father’s love for danger and adventure. No slash, just friendship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The many lives of John Watson

**Author's Note:**

> In this fic, Harry Watson is based upon Jenny (from Doctor Who s4e6, the Doctor's Daughter) in terms of appearance and personality, but she has a different backstory.

John Watson has lived a very long and varied life. Well, lives technically. Five, to be precise. He’s on his sixth now.

His sister, Harry, is on her eighth life, despite being almost a hundred years younger than her brother.

John Watson is currently on Earth, taking a break. Harry, as far as he knows, is still touring around the stars, getting into all sorts of trouble. That’s what she normally does, anyway.

They haven’t been in contact for a while, fifteen years or so. Because of this, John is very surprised when he gets a call from his sister out of the blue, when he is in the middle of a case involving none other than Sherlock Holmes.

-o0o-

I suppose I should start at the beginning of John’s story. Or at least, the beginning of this part of John’s story.

It started after the Time War. John and Harry stumbled out of their father’s TARDIS, coughing and choking on the smoke. They turned around and looked back at the figure in the smoke, waving goodbye to them. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “Save yourselves. I’ll save the universe.”

“Dad, no!” Harry shouted, and ran forward, but she was too late. The TARDIS had vanished.

John walked forwards and laid a hand on her shoulder. “He’ll be fine, Harry. He always is.”

“He can’t save our planet alone,” she said, staring at the space where the TARDIS had been.

“He’ll work something out.” She didn’t move. “Harry, we have to go. People will be coming along soon, to investigate the smoke.”

Finally, she turned around. “Where are we?”

“Appalappachia,” he told her, having recognised the place when they arrived. “I think he wanted to drop us somewhere beautiful, and friendly, and safe.”

She sniffed, and fiercely wiped away a single tear that had fallen, unbidden, onto her cheek. “That’s just like him.”

“Let’s go,” he said again, and this time she followed him away, out of the smoke.

-o0o-

They split up soon after that, each going their own way. Harry stole a spaceship almost straight away, going for a ‘cruise around the universe’. She would try to find their father as well, but neither would admit it. Instead. John waved her goodbye with a bittersweet smile.

He tried to copy her at first, half-heartedly going to the typical tourist sites. The Planet of the Coffee Shops. The planet Midnight. The emerald caves of Poosh. The thrice-stolen gate of Yupatrom. But rattling around the galaxy became boring, after a while. So John went to Earth instead.

He wandered around England for a while, trying to find a purpose. He began to use his old surname alias again, Watson, which he had stolen from a gravestone centuries earlier.

Eventually, John found himself in the middle of another war, this time in Afghanistan. Just his luck, to escape one war to end up in another, albeit much smaller, war. He tried not to, but he found himself comparing this war each day to the Time War. He found himself thinking that humans knew nothing about war, nothing about the true destruction and terror it could bring. These little battles, these petty fights, were nothing compared to what his planet and his people had experienced.

After some time, John found these thoughts unbearable. He tried to be brave and strong and noble, like his father, but he could not. So he got himself shot.

He could have healed quickly using his regeneration energy, but this would have made the humans suspicious. Instead, he forced himself to heal slowly, leaving a scar in his shoulder that he knew would be there until his next regeneration. It hurt a lot, of course, but it was better than the alternative.

John was sent back to England, and after a while encountered a curious mystery on a website. He read further, and discovered a man who shouldn’t have existed, yet somehow did. John resolved to investigate further. Perhaps that would bring some purpose back into his lives.

-o0o-

Being at the centre of time and space had its advantages. John knew that he needed to be walking through a particular park on a particular date, and so he did, hobbling along on his unnecessary cane.

“John? John Watson?”

He turned around to see a familiar face. “Stamford. Mike Stamford,” the man introduced himself. “We were at Bart’s together.”

Of course he remembered him, from much earlier in this life. Before the Time War, even. However, a human might not have remembered. “Yes, sorry, yes, Mike. Hello, hi,” John said. They shook hands.

“Yeah, I know. I got fat!” Mike laughed, gesturing to himself.

“No,” John lied easily.

“I heard you were abroad somewhere, getting shot at,” Mike said conversationally. “What happened?”

“I got shot.” It was the truth, after all.

Mike bought John a coffee (how quaint), and they sat on a bench together. They talked about London and army pensions, then Mike mentioned Harry. John felt a lump in his throat. Where was she? Was she still alive? Had she found Dad?

He pushed the thoughts aside to focus on the conversation. Eventually, Mike offered him a landline: a flat share in central London. John seized it with both hands. Mike took him to the hospital where they used to study, hundreds of years earlier for John, only a few decades for Mike.

They went into a lab with a man who seemed unremarkable at first. Just another scientist. However, the instant he opened his mouth, John was certain he had the right man. The calmness, confidence, even the stance was the same.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

He began to deduce things about John. Little things, such as the fact he had been an army doctor, and he had a brother called Harry (sister actually, but close enough, John decided). He got some things wrong, though: he thought Harry was an alcoholic, when it had been Clara; and he thought John’s limp was psychosomatic when it was merely put on. What he didn’t deduce was that John was an alien from another planet, or that he had died five times before. In other words, nothing important.

“The name’s Sherlock Holmes, and the address is 221B Baker Street.”

John was certain he had the right man. Now all he had to do was wait until the next evening to see him again, and hopefully gain some more information.

-o0o-

Sure enough, the next day, John found himself moving in with Sherlock Holmes, the man who shouldn’t exist. Not only that, before long they were chasing around half of London after a mysterious criminal, who turned out to be a taxi driver, of all people.

When they were running, John found himself so caught up in the chase that he completely forgot to keep limping. Sherlock noticed this, of course. However, his arrogance meant that he thought he had cured John, who was only too happy to let him keep thinking that.

Life continued on, and John and Sherlock ran around together, being a modern-day detective and sidekick. John was fully aware of his role as sidekick, and kept a blog of his and Sherlock’s adventures, true to form with his literary counterpart. He was careful not to seem too intelligent, instead working extra hard to keep up the human façade, even becoming a doctor (oh, the irony).

As soon as he saw Sarah, he had a feeling about her, similar to when he knew he had to be in the park to meet Mike. She would be important, he could tell; so he asked her out on a date, which went predictably pear-shaped. He kept going out with her afterwards as well, of course, because she was a nice person.

As John and Sherlock ran around, chasing Chinese gangsters and consulting criminals, John realised that he was feeling more alive than he had in years. He felt as if he had a purpose, aside from being the Doctor’s son. Here, he wasn’t saving planets or fighting civilisations. Instead, he was solving problems that were much smaller, but equally as important.

It was something of a surprise to him when Sherlock revealed that he didn’t care about the human lives he was saving. John stormed out, but almost as soon as he was outside, he decided to put it down to ignorance. He was putting a lot down to ignorance, these days.

He was only a few streets away from Sarah’s flat when somebody crashed into him from behind, pushing him over and pinning him down. He struggled, but they injected something into his neck to knock him out. It didn’t work, of course, but he pretended to be asleep anyway. It was easier than explaining.

When he ‘came to’, he was in a cubicle near what smelled like a swimming pool. Someone had roughly shoved an overcoat on him with explosives. _Well, this is new_ , he thought resignedly as he waited for something to happen.

And sure enough, it did. Sherlock arrived, and John had to briefly pretend to be Moriarty before Molly’s gay boyfriend revealed himself. While he and Sherlock were talking, John saw an opportunity and took it, grabbing Moriarty’s throat from behind. Maybe, just maybe, he would be able to stop any more deaths. He knew that if Moriarty was allowed to live, there would be more murders, as per the original books. “Sherlock, run!”

He didn’t run, of course. Just John’s luck. And to top it off, Moriarty had snipers aiming at both of them. Now, if there was one thing John was not going to let happen, it was Sherlock Holmes dying. So he stepped back, and left his fate in Sherlock’s hands. Again.

The conflict was temporarily resolved, and life continued on. John barely had time to think about the family he had left behind as he and Sherlock investigated a dominatrix and an imaginary dog, of all things.

The dog, incidentally, turned out to be the result of a hallucinatory drug, which was so potent it that even worked on Time Lords. There weren’t many Earth substances that could do that. John made a mental note to investigate it further if he had a chance.

However, all thoughts of suspicious drugs were pushed aside when one day, out of the blue, John received a call from none other than Harry Watson.

-o0o-

“John! I need a pen!” Sherlock called. There was no answer.

He opened his mouth to call out again, but stopped when he remembered something John had said a while ago, about not always being in the room. Sighing, he sat up and made his way upstairs to John’s room, grumbling internally all the way.

Sherlock stopped outside John’s room, and was raising a hand to knock when he heard voices coming through the closed door. He leaned closer and listened.

Inside, John held up a small hand-held device that resembled a smartphone. He was looking at a women, her pale blonde hair pulled up in a ponytail, her large mouth in a cheeky grin. “…not the best time, Harry,” he was saying apologetically.

She wasn’t looking at him, instead focusing on the spaceship controls in front of her. “Guess what I’m doing.”

“Are you going to get arrested again?” he asked resignedly.

Harry glanced up at the camera, before returning her attention to the control panel. “Only if I’m caught, Johnny.”

John pursed his lips, then ventured to ask a carefully veiled question. “And dad won’t find out?”

“Nah. Said he’s busy for the next week,” she said casually.

John suppressed a frown at the news that she’d spoken to their father. “Rule one,” he reminded her. “He lies.”

This time, Harry looked up at her brother and grinned widely. “Rule number four, John. The fun is in the chase.”

He sighed exasperatedly. “Why now, Harry? It’s been years, for me. Longer for you, I can tell. Why are you ringing me now?”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “I got bored.”

John snorted. “When you’re bored, Harry, you don’t call me. You go and fight some Raxicoricofallapatorians, or liberate some Tivolians, or something.”

Harry opened her mouth to answer, then glanced above the camera, to another monitor. “Incoming!” she yelled suddenly, and hit a button. John’s screen went blank.

He sighed and dropped his arm, knowing that she would contact him as soon as she could, whenever that would be. He gave up worrying long ago.

Outside the door, Sherlock withdrew silently, and slipped downstairs. He lay back on the sofa, and settled down to think about some of the strange things John had said.

Nothing came of these strange things for a while. It was a long time before Harry contacted John again. During that time, Sherlock became famous.

When they discovered the painting of the Reichenbach Falls, John became uneasy, remembering the original Conan Doyle story with the same place. However, he brushed off his misgivings, reassuring himself that it was probably a coincidence. Probably.

Instead, John committed himself to working with Sherlock. He had hoped they would be finished with Moriarty, but then the psychopath returned, this time with a vengeance. Again, the Reichenbach Falls niggled at John’s conscience, but he did his best to block it out, rather than preparing for the worst. He was getting good at that.

-o0o-

Then one day, the worst happened. John got out of the cab outside St Bart’s hospital, only to receive the phone call that would change his life.

He watched Sherlock jump, watched him fall to the bitter end. He went numb. _No,_ he thought. _You weren’t going to get involved._ The memory of ‘The Final Problem’ returned to him in a flash, and he knew somehow that Sherlock was gone.

Still, he allowed himself to stagger forward numbly, thinking, _no. It’s not possible. No._

Over the days, weeks, months that followed, John merely went through the actions of living, going to work, meeting friends. Or rather, that was what he let everybody think.

Whenever someone mentioned Sherlock, John thought back and allowed the pain of the loss of his planet, his family, and his entire race to wash over him. When people saw the true pain in his eyes, they would usually stop talking, which suited John just fine.

He often felt frustrated, thinking about Sherlock. Sometimes he would go into a rage, yelling and throwing things around his new flat. Once the neighbours had called the police, scared that he was having a fight. The rage of a Time Lord was strong on any planet.

The thing was, John had come _so close_ to finding out the secret, he was sure. He had been _so close_ to fulfilling his new purpose in life. And then Sherlock had died, just like that. It wasn’t fair.

Eventually, John got tired of living on Earth, waiting to die so he could regenerate and leave. There was no way he could just disappear off into space, he was in too far. He could of course pretend to kill himself and then leave, but that would not be fair to those he was friends with. He had learnt his lesson on doing that to people, from Sherlock. Lessons from a dead man, now that was new.

There was still no word from Harry.

Then everything changed when the beautiful Mary Morstan appeared in his life. John had clung for so long onto the hope that Sherlock would return, but was beginning to give up. Maybe the events of ‘The Empty House’ would not happen. Maybe Sherlock was gone, and John was stuck on Earth for the rest of this life, playing the grieving widow.

After he met Mary, John became certain that Sherlock would return. For how could the story be continuing, if the main character was dead?

True to form, John got to know Mary better, and eventually asked her to marry him. Or at least, he tried to.

For that was the night that Sherlock Holmes returned from the dead.

John was sitting, reading the menu. An annoying waiter came up to him and started to push the wine menu in his face, which in itself was strange; the waiters at this restaurant were usually very reserved.

Then the waiter spoke again. John concentrated on the voice, and recognised it almost instantly. _The bastard_ , he thought, but didn’t say anything. Instead, he pretended not to recognise Sherlock, relishing the thought of how the detective’s face must look.

Before Mary came downstairs, John had time to think about how he would react when Sherlock properly revealed himself. He could of course have merely fainted, like Watson had in the book. However, he decided to go for the more fun option of attacking him.

Life managed to continue on. John and Mary got married, eventually, and lived together with the promise of a child. John still hadn’t told Mary who he was. He realised he would have to say something before the baby was born. He should have told her earlier, he knew. But how does one find the right time or place to tell one’s wife that one is an alien, chasing the trail of a best friend who shouldn’t even exist?

His life was thrown into turmoil once more when Sherlock was shot by an unknown assassin, and flat lined in hospital. No sooner had John recovered from the relief that his friend has survived, then he found the identity of the assassin: his wife, Mary Morstan.

John became angry. Really angry. Both with Mary, for not saying anything; and with himself, for not noticing himself that Mary was not who she said she was. Of course Sherlock had worked it out. Perfect Sherlock.

After John’s anger, he realised that he had become too caught up in living with Mary, and with being human. He resolved to focus back on his original case, and so he moved back into 221B Baker Street, under the pretence of temporarily leaving Mary.

John turned up on the doorstep of 221B in the rain, with a packed suitcase and a desperate expression. Sherlock let him in immediately, and even helped him to get his old room ready to live in.

Exactly two months later, John received a video call from Harry.


	2. Panic! in the TARDIS

Sherlock was experimenting on the kitchen table. John was reading the newspaper on his armchair. Mrs Hudson was downstairs, taking her ‘herbal soothers’. All was well.

Suddenly, there was a buzzing in John’s pocket. He surreptitiously withdrew his hand-held device and checked it.

Harry’s face grinned up at him from the screen. He motioned for her to be silent, eyes widening; then got up quietly from his chair and hurried up to his room, muttering something like, “Got to check my email.”

Sherlock seemingly paid no attention, concentrating hard on his titration. As soon as John closed his bedroom door, however, his head snapped up, and he stood up silently as a mime and followed John upstairs.

John sat again on his bed, door open a crack. Sherlock eased it open as much as possible without it creaking, then concentrated on the voices from within.

“…last time,” Harry was saying apologetically. “Ran into some Vogons. Well, I say _ran into_. It’s entirely possible they were trying to get their ship back.”

John rolled his eyes, but he was grinning. He looked happier, and more at ease, than Sherlock had seen him in a long time. “I thought you weren’t going to steal anything else, after that run-in with the Judoon?”

“You make me sound like a felon, John,” she said, pretending to be hurt.

“Why have you called this time?” he asked her. “I thought you would call me sooner.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” she said. “Got distracted. Anyway, I need your help.”

“With what?”

She pursed her lips and leaned forward conspiratorially. “I lost Dad. I’ve been looking for him for months. And I’ve found him now. Well, sort of. I need your help.”

John started to look excited, but caught himself. “I can’t Harry. I’m in the middle of a case. A big one.”

“I’m intrigued. Tell me more.”

“There’s a man, here in 2010, by the name of Sherlock Holmes. He’s a detective.”

Harry laughed. “That’s a heck of a coincidence.”

John didn’t smile. “That’s the thing, you see. It’s not. The Sherlock Holmes we know, Conan Doyle’s character – he doesn’t seem to exist anymore. I’ve looked everywhere, and he’s just…gone. There are no records of the fictional detective. The only Sherlock Holmes now is my flatmate.”

She frowned. “But that’s simply not possible.”

“Like it or not, that’s how it is,” John said grimly. “So I’m here, trying to figure out what happened. I can’t go off for long periods of time, Harry. I have a life here now. And a wife,” he added as an afterthought.

Harry didn’t mention the wife, instead studying him almost pityingly. “You have been gone a while, haven’t you? We’re _Time Lords_ , John. We control time, not the other way around. You can go away for years, and be back in time for tea.”

John’s face slowly began to brighten as he remembered. “When can you meet me?”

She smiled. “That’s the spirit. Now, London…are you anywhere near St. Bart’s Hospital?”

“Right around the corner, almost,” he said. “But why there, of all places?”

Harry shrugged. “I have history there. Be on the rooftop, 10am tomorrow. We’re going on a Dad-hunt!”

They both laughed, then Harry terminated the connection. John sat back with a smile on his face. He could practically taste the adventure waiting for him the next day. Sherlock, meanwhile, slipped back downstairs noiselessly, to think over what he had heard.

The next morning, John put on his coat. “I’m just going out, Sherlock,” he called into the living room. “Back in time for tea.”

Sherlock didn’t move from his position lying on the couch. He gave no indication of having heard John, who sighed and went outside. He stopped and did up his coat, pretending to shiver in the cool winter air.

A second after the front door banged shut, Sherlock’s eyes flew open. He swung his legs around and stood up, hurrying downstairs and pulling on his coat. The door closed silently behind him.

-o0o-

John stood in the middle of the rooftop, looking around impatiently. Eventually, there was a _vworp, vworp_ sound behind him, and he spun around.

The blue box stood behind him in all its glory, lights shining brightly. John felt his hearts leap, but kept a neutral facial expression.

The door squeaked open, and Harry poked her head out, looking around until she saw him. She was wearing a green T-shirt and black trousers, with practical boots, just like normal. She hadn’t changed a bit since John had last seen her, despite decades passing for her. She looked a little older around the eyes, but aside from that, there was no change.

Upon seeing John, her mouth formed into a large smile, which faltered when she saw his face. “And what sort of a time do you call this?” he asked disapprovingly, tapping his watch.

Harry glanced at hers. “Two minutes past ten,” she said, before looking up at him guiltily.

John mock-tutted at her tardiness, then stopped and grinned. He crossed the space between them in two bounds, and pulled her into a tight hug. “It’s good to see you,” he murmured into her ear.

“You too, Johnny,” Harry said, returning the hug. Then she pulled back and held him at arm’s length. “How’ve you been? You look terrible.”

“Thanks,” John told her. “I’ve been really good, actually. Life’s slow here, but that suits me just fine. I wanted to settle down, you know, after the War.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I feel the same.” John raised an eyebrow, and she elaborated. “Not in the same way as you, of course. Just…wanting to get away, to do something different. So I travelled the universe, while you shut yourself up in this little country.”

“Don’t let Dad hear you calling it little,” John warned. “He’s very fond of this place. And so am I.”

“I can tell,” Harry said, indicating the wedding ring on his finger. “What’s her name, then?”

John hid his hand behind his back bashfully. “Mary. Mary Morstan.”

Harry wanted to laugh, but noticed that John seemed tense when talking about Mary. She decided to change the subject. “Can you show me where you live? You said it was just around the corner, right?”

He nodded and led her over to the edge of the roof. He put an arm around her shoulders and pointed. “See that red roof there? I live right behind that, at the moment.”

She frowned. “Bit small, isn’t it?”

“Says the woman who’s flying around in a telephone box.”

She laughed. “Point taken.”

It was John’s turn to change the subject. “You said you’d found Dad.”

Harry’s smile vanished, and her face turned grim. “Yeah. Well. Sort of. I found his TARDIS.”

John raised an eyebrow. “I can see that. Is this all you’ve got? His TARDIS?”

“Well, that’s not all!” she said defensively. “There’s also a warning inside, but I can’t understand it.”

“So you thought I could help you.”

“I think Dad’s in trouble, John. We could save him. Think of all the times he’s saved us. Saved other people, other civilisations, all around the galaxy. And now we can help him. What do you say, Johnny? One last adventure?”

He smiled. “In that case, how could I possibly refuse?”

Harry held out her small hand, and John took it in his larger one. Together, they walked towards the blue box, and went in the open door.

John stopped inside the door and looked around the control room. “He’s redecorated.”

“I know,” Harry said, skipping over to the console. “I don’t like it either.”

He shrugged, following her to the middle of the room. “It’s okay, I guess. How’ve you been, old girl?” he asked, this time talking to the console which reached up to the ceiling.

It mumbled in response, lights flashing. “It’s been a long time for you, hasn’t it?” John said in the way someone might talk to a well-loved pet. “I’ve missed you.”

Over the other side of the room, Harry frowned. “John, take a look at this.”

He hurried around the console. “What’s up?”

She pointed. “There’s a strange warning on the projector. It’s saying there’s another person on here, but they’re unidentifiable.”

“Impossible,” John told her. “A TARDIS can identify anything.”

“Not this person. It doesn’t even know where on the ship they are.”

He glanced around, suddenly gripped by fear. “So you’re telling me that there’s someone else here, and they could be anywhere?”

Harry nodded worriedly. “Swimming pool, library, broom closet, even that little room that has nothing in it except for a sink.”

John noticed another alert, and read it quickly. “The TARDIS is panicking. It’s going to shut down any second now.”

As he said the last word, all the lights turned off simultaneously, and the engine sounds froze. The only light was the soft glow of the console, barely enough for the siblings to make out each other’s faces.

They looked at each other, then slowly turned so they were standing back-to-back, staring out into the darkness. Harry reached her hand back to grasp John’s. “I’m scared,” she whispered.

“So am I,” he admitted in a whisper. “I’m hoping I’ll wake up and this will be a bad dream.”

There was a pause when neither spoke. After a moment, John said, in a slightly louder voice, “I don’t see how this is possible. I didn’t think there was a creature that was undetectable to the TARDIS. I’ve certainly never met one.”

Harry had just opened her mouth to agree with him when a very familiar voice spoke. “Actually, John, you have.”

They both spun around to see a figure on the other side of the console, the view distorted through the glass of the rotor. It moved to the side slightly, and John took an involuntary step backwards.

For standing there, the dim light of the console casting green shadows upon his face, was none other than Sherlock Holmes.

Harry froze, her eyes narrowing. “Who are you?” she demanded.

John seemed lost for words. He blinked once, twice, and shook his head. Then he cleared his throat. “Sher- Sherlock?”

“Hello, John,” the consulting detective replied in his rumbling baritone.

Harry was staring between them. “You’re Sherlock Holmes? John’s flatmate? How did you get in here?”

He looked at her. “You left the door open when John was showing you where we live. I merely slipped in while you weren’t looking.”

“You gave the TARDIS a panic attack!” she told him indignantly.

Sherlock addressed them while walking down the stairs towards them. “Ah, yes, the TARDIS. Your ship?” he inquired, popping the ‘p’. “Very nice ship. It appears to be bigger on the inside. Or is it smaller on the outside?” He stopped, one hand resting lightly on the console. “Either way, it seems impossible. Like the conversation you had yesterday. I heard you, John.

“You know,” he continued, “all this time, I’ve been searching for cases to keep me occupied. However, all this time, there was a case, a big case, sitting in front of me drinking tea. The case of John Watson.”

Sherlock was leaning right in towards John, staring at his face. John did not move, just stayed where he was, staring right back at Sherlock.

“Go on then,” he said. “You’re good at deductions. Deduce me.”

Sherlock frowned and leaned in towards John, displaying his total disregard for personal space. “You’re very old, aren’t you?”

John stared back at Sherlock unflinchingly. “Older than you will ever be,” he said, much more calm than he had been less than a minute earlier.

“There’s so much in your eyes. I thought it was the war, but there’s more than that, isn’t there?”

“These eyes have seen things you can only imagine, Sherlock Holmes. Countless horrors from beyond this world.”

“What Harry said to you yesterday, about time. ‘We control time, not the other way around.’ What did that mean?”

John pursed his lips. “I’m not who you think I am. I’m not even what you think I am. I’m not human, nor is Harry.”

“What are you then?”

“Time Lords,” Harry said from behind Sherlock. He spun around to see her staring up at him. “Aliens, at least to you. We’re from the planet Gallifrey, in the constellation of Kasterborous. We are each hundreds of years old, and currently looking for our father, who is closer to a thousand years old. Oh, and we’re standing in a spaceship and time machine, which appears much smaller on the outside than it is on the inside. Any more questions?”

Sherlock considered her. “Harriet Jennifer Watson, I presume?”

She nodded. “That’s my name in English.”

“And in your language?”

“Names have power,” she said simply.

He frowned. “You’re not an alcoholic.”

She smiled slightly, for the first time wince Sherlock had revealed himself. “What’s John been telling you?”

“He didn’t tell me anything. His phone did.”

Harry looked over at John. “Are you still using that old one Clara Oswin gave me?”

He shrugged. “It fits with the time period.”

Sherlock spoke up. “Time, yes. Time Lords. Aliens that control time, or so you say. Tell me, how exactly does that work?”

John sighed. “This ship. The TARDIS. Stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space.”

Sherlock turned to Harry. “You said it appeared to be smaller on the outside. Why ‘appeared’?”

“The blue box on the outside is a gateway,” she explained. “This is another dimension we’re in now.”

“And how big is a dimension?”

“Infinite.”

Sherlock nodded vaguely, and glanced around. John sighed again, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, Sherlock. What are you doing here?”

“You mentioned a mystery. I’m here to solve it.”

“You’re the mystery,” Harry said. “You shouldn’t exist. You don’t exist, according to the TARDIS. You have mass, but you do not exist.”

“Speaking of the TARDIS,” John said, “we should probably try to get some more lights on.” He reached over and flipped a few switches, then typed something into the keyboard. The lights flickered on, and they could see each other properly for the first time.

“How can I not exist?” Sherlock asked calmly. However, John could see that Sherlock looked almost worried, an alien emotion for the normally calm, in-control man.

Harry shrugged in answer to his question. “How can you be in an infinitely large telephone box talking to two aliens, one of whom was your flatmate for years?”

John took pity on Sherlock and explained. “How well do you know the works of Arthur Conan Doyle?”

“Reasonably well. I read most of his stories in university.”

“Well, in the world that Harry and I know, his most famous stories are about a Victorian detective called Sherlock Holmes. He has a friend called Doctor John H. Watson, and a landlady called Mrs Hudson. Dr Watson narrates all the stories but four. Is this sounding at all familiar?”

Sherlock was frowning. “But that’s impossible.”

“Yeah. Welcome to our world,” said Harry.

He looked around the TARDIS, then back at the siblings. “So I’m a copy, then? A copy of this fictional detective?” He stared at John, a helpless look in his eyes.

John put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Sherlock, but it appears you are.”

“How about Moriarty? If I wasn’t around, he wouldn’t have been stopped all those times.”

“He was in the books as well,” Harry said gently. “So was Mrs Hudson, so was Lestrade, so was Mycroft, so was Irene Adler, so was John.”

“So you’re a copy as well?” Sherlock asked John quickly.

“Not really. My name isn’t Watson, it’s just a name I picked up from a gravestone. I’m fulfilling a prophecy, more than anything else.”

“But why? And how? How do I know you’re not lying to me?”

Harry picked a book up off the console and chucked it to Sherlock. He caught it easily, and scanned the cover. “The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle,” he read. “‘A Sherlock Holmes Mystery’. Is this where you get the titles for your blog from, John?”

John blinked. “Um, yes,” he said. “You don’t seem very surprised.”

“So, your ship doesn’t recognise me because I don’t exist?” Sherlock asked Harry, changing the subject.

She blinked. “That’s right. John just told her that you were safe, so she’s stopped panicking.”

“Your ship is female?”

“Essentially, she’s a matrix inside a machine. It’s hard to explain. She can hear us talking, when she wants to.”

The TARDIS console rumbled and a few lights flashed, as if agreeing with the statement.

Sherlock opened his mouth to ask another question, when the floor suddenly started to shake. The ship lurched, unbalancing everyone first one way, then the other.

Harry and John grabbed the console with practised ease. “What was that?” Harry shouted over the sudden noises from the TARDIS.

“Turbulence in the time vortex,” John replied, checking the monitor.

“But we’re not in the time vortex!” Harry yelled in confusion.

John grabbed a hammer from under the console, and tapped some blue buttons. The ship slowly stabilised itself.

“I think she took us there to shake off the intruder,” he said, when things were calm enough for him to be heard. “Without asking, I might add,” he said pointedly.

“Speaking of the intruder,” Harry asked, “where is he?”

John glanced around. Sure enough, Sherlock was nowhere to be seen. “Sherlock?” he yelled, suddenly worried.

He was answered by a low groan from the other side of one of the coral struts. “Sherlock!” John said anxiously, running around to see him.

The detective was lying on the floor, head resting against the coral strut. He had apparently been thrown through two branches by the jolting. His eyes were closed. “Can you hear me?” John asked clearly. “Are you all right?”

Sherlock’s eyes flickered open at the sound of John’s voice. He tried to sit up, but could not. “I…I’m not sure,” he said shakily.

Harry had followed John, and was also crouching at Sherlock’s side. “John,” she said urgently, “he’s bleeding.”

John looked at the back of Sherlock’s head, where his sister was pointing to, and cursed in Gallifreyan. “Let’s get him to the med bay.”

Together, the Time Lords carefully picked Sherlock up and carried him through the door into the corridor, despite his protestations. John sat him down on a small bed, while Harry opened a cupboard and looked inside.

“I’m fine, John,” Sherlock complained.

“You’ve got a deep cut,” John told him. “You would need stitches for that.”

“‘Would’?” Sherlock asked. “I don’t need stitches because…?”

“Because of this,” Harry said, walking over to them holding a small bottle like a medicine bottle. She gave it to John, who took off the lid and poured some liquid onto a cotton ball. Sherlock could swear it was smoking.

“This won’t hurt a bit,” John said, before gently wiping the cut with the cotton ball.

“Ouch!” Sherlock said, and jerked backwards. “That did hurt!”

“I lied,” John said calmly, putting the lid back on the bottle.

“What was it?” Sherlock asked, gently touching the area where the cut was. It appeared to be healed.

“On a basic level, it melts your skin and fuses it back together. You don’t want to know the details,” Harry explained.

“Nice,” the detective commented.

“You should sleep now,” John said worriedly. “The serum isn’t intended for human use, and you might experience some side effects.”

Sherlock stood upright. “I’m perfectly fine, John,” he said dismissively. “My body is merely trans-” That was all he managed to say before he collapsed into Harry’s waiting arms. With John’s help, she lifted Sherlock onto the medical bed, and they left him to sleep.


	3. Rule three: don't be smart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A sphygmomanometer is a device for measuring blood pressure, just in case you were wondering what the hell was going on later.

Sherlock Holmes blearily opened his eyes and looked around. He was in a strange room, similar to a medical bay. The main difference was several machines and contraptions sitting around the room that even Sherlock didn’t recognise.

His brain was instantly alert, even if his body wasn’t. He attempted to stand up, but his legs betrayed him, and he ended up on the floor. He tried to call for help, but his voice wasn’t working. Sherlock tried a few more times to stand up, kicking his legs as if attempting breaststroke. Eventually he gave up and settled for remembering where he was, improbable though it was.

A spaceship. A real, living spaceship. An improbable spaceship, in which he had been severely injured, before being miraculously cured by an alien serum.

Sherlock coughed, and found he was able to let out a small groan. He did so, and then concluded that the acoustics on this spaceship must also be highly improbable, when John and Harry came running.

“Sherlock!” John admonished when they fund him on the floor. “Why can’t you ever stay in one place?”

“Right,” Harry said, helping John to lift Sherlock back onto the bed, “let’s lay some guidelines. Rule one: don’t wander off.”

By now, Sherlock was able to form a croaky sentence. “I thought rule one was that your father lied,” he rasped.

“Rule two: don’t question rule one,” she told him firmly. “And rule three: don’t be smart.”

“Smart is who I am,” he told her. “Smart protects me.”

“Not here,” John told him. “We’re in charge here. We’ll protect you. Now, when you’re up to it, which will be in about half an hour, we can discuss things in the console room. Until then, you stay here.”

Sherlock threw his head back onto the pillow. “Dull,” he murmured.

“Tough,” John said, and left. Harry smiled sweetly at Sherlock, and shut the door behind her.

Sherlock sighed and turned his gaze upwards. Hanging above his head was a sphygmomanometer, with strange symbols engraved around the dial which Sherlock couldn’t read.

Inspecting the device further, he frowned. With an effort, Sherlock reached upwards and took hold of the device, pulling the dial closer towards him. Upon closer inspection, the dial seemed identical to those on Earth, save for the symbols. He guessed that he could work out what each symbol meant, due to its placement upon the sphygmomanometer.

Less than five minutes later, Sherlock had learned the major Gallifreyan numbers from the dial, and was working his way around the room trying to deduce the meanings of more Gallifreyan symbols. After all, it would surely be useful to understand at least some alien language when travelling with aliens.

-o0o-

An age later, Sherlock was able to stand upright without his head swimming. He left the boring medical room and Turned Left, heading for the control room. He arrived in the doorway, and stood there for a few moments, taking in the control room in more detail. He noticed the metal grating on the floor, and the bronze circles of unknown origin stretching up almost to the top of the curved ceiling, where they gave way to orange panels. Sherlock observed the wires hanging from the ceiling and the coral struts, and the general messiness of the console.  He also noticed how the room felt almost organic, as if it was a living, breathing, thinking organism confined in a machine.

John and Harry stood leaning on the console. Both turned to look up at him.

“You’re up, then,” Harry observed with a touch of coldness.

John elbowed her in the side. “Ignore her. How are you feeling?”

“Better, thank you,” Sherlock said, walking down towards them. “Where’s my coat?”

John nodded towards Harry. She glared at him, then smiled awkwardly at Sherlock. “Um. About that. You weren’t particularly attached to the coat, were you?”

“Where is it?” he inquired, his voice dangerously quiet.

She mumbled something, leaning her back against the console.

“What did you say?” he asked sharply, still advancing towards them.

“I dropped it in a black hole,” she said quickly. “Slight accident. Well, I say slight…” she stopped, because Sherlock was standing over her, his tall form looming over her short one.

He frowned. “A black hole?”

“Watch it, Sherlock,” John began to warn him.

“How did you get close enough to a black hole to drop something into it?” Sherlock asked Harry curiously, ignoring John.

She paused, and raised an eyebrow at him. “I just lost an article of your clothing in deep space, and you’re asking about the physics of it?”

Sherlock stepped back and frowned. “Not good?” he asked, directing the question towards John.

John rolled his eyes. “I’ll explain later. We should really get down to business, now you’re feeling better.”

“Yes, but-”

John spoke over Sherlock, cutting him off. “It seems we have several mysteries here,” he began. “First, where our father is, and why he is not in his TARDIS. Second, how the hell you exist,” he pointed at Sherlock.

“And third, why our father let the TARDIS redecorate itself like this,” Harry interjected.

“Yes…wait, no!” John said. “Third, we find out what happened to Conan Doyle’s character. Any questions?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said pointedly. “How can you be close to a black hole without falling in yourself?”

Harry sighed. “The TARDIS is a huge source of energy, and creates its own gravitational field, amongst other things. Can we get to the matter at hand?”

“Very well,” Sherlock said. “First, I suggest that we…”

John held up his hand, looking awkward. “Sherlock. I know you’re used to being in charge, but with respect, this is my ship.”

“Our ship,” Harry reminded him somewhat indignantly.

“Our ship,” he corrected himself, then looked at Sherlock expectantly.

Sherlock looked down, considering, then up at the two siblings. “All right,” he conceded. “Your ship.”

John breathed an invisible sigh of relief at Sherlock’s agreement.

 “If you don’t mind me asking,” Sherlock continued, “where are we now?”

John and Harry shared a grin. “May I do the honours?” she asked.

“You may.”

Harry led the way to the door grandly, then turned and smiled at Sherlock. “Mr Holmes, I present to you, the Earth!” She flung the door open, perhaps a touch too dramatically.

Sherlock stood next to her and stared out at…nothing. Nothing, and yet everything he knew. In front of him, amidst a sea of black, was the Earth. From this distance, he could see the planet slowly turning in an endless circle. He could see the moon, tiny next to the giant expanse of the Earth, which itself was dwarfed by the massive sun, far in the distance.

John came and stood behind Sherlock. “See?” he said. “The Earth does go around the sun.”

Sherlock didn’t even acknowledge that John had spoken. He stood silently, arms by his sides, seemingly struck dumb by the unique sight.

Eventually, he spoke. “I suppose this is normal for you two?”

Harry glanced at John. “Well, I suppose so. Yes,” she said.

He nodded and turned away. “In the same way I find London normal and boring, the universe is boring and normal for you. That explains a lot about the way John acts.”

“How I act?” John frowned. “What do you mean?”

Sherlock looked back outside the TARDIS. “Once, I pointed out the beauty of the stars, when we were outside at night. You seemed to barely acknowledge it, as if it was nothing new. Now, I’ve hardly met any humans who fail to be amazed by the universe.

“However, when we drive around London, you are always looking out the window, marvelling at the perfectly ordinary sight of people walking around London, going about their daily business. Surely, at your age, with your experience, they would merely be insignificant creatures to you?”

John blinked. “Very perceptive.”

Sherlock smiled thinly. “I try.”

“But you’re wrong,” John continued. “People aren’t insignificant ants. They’re giants. Humans are by far my favourite species. Sure, some of you are just plain bad. But humans…it’s hard to describe.”

Harry helped him out. “Humans are one of those species who are just so…so determined, to learn more. So many species just sit on their planet until they die out, not caring, just living their own little lives.”

“Or else they try to conquer the galaxy,” John added.

“Yes,” Harry acknowledged. “But when humans leave the planet, it’s for no reason but to explore. To learn more about their little solar system, and later on other galaxies. That’s why we love humans.”

“Should you be telling me this?” Sherlock asked her. “About the future?”

“Let’s just say that you’re not the first human in this TARDIS.”

His ears pricked up. “‘ _This_ TARDIS’? There are more?”

John sighed. “That’s another conversation for another time, Sherlock. We already have three mysteries, remember? Although the last two seem to be linked.”

“Where should we start?” Harry asked, and for the first time, it was clear to Sherlock that John really was in charge. Harry deferred to him, and they both expected Sherlock to do the same. It was going to take some getting used to.

John strode to the TARDIS console. Harry closed the TARDIS door and followed him. He fiddled with some buttons and levers on the console. “Well,” he said, “we’re going to begin by working out what happened to Dad. Then we’re going to see Conan Doyle, and get this mess straightened out. But first,” he took a breath and looked at Sherlock, who was glancing upwards to the top of the time rotor, “we’re going to take Sherlock Holmes home.”

Sherlock’s head snapped down to stare intensely at John. His blank stare carried a lot of meaning.

John looked away. “It’s too dangerous, Sherlock,” he said helplessly in answer to the unspoken question.

“I can handle it, John,” Sherlock said finally. “I’ve faced down serial killers, and psychopaths, and mobsters, and bankers. I think I can handle whatever you’ve got.” The words were mocking, scornful, but the tone was not. Instead, Sherlock spoke slowly and quietly, as if unsure that he was correct.

John sighed, leaning against the console. He ran a hand through his hair, and looked up at Sherlock, agitated. “Christ, Sherlock! You’ve already managed to crack your head open, and you haven’t even left the TARDIS. Look, Harry and me, we can handle it. We’ve been out there for years. Centuries.” He jabbed an angry finger towards the door, then lowered it slowly back down to the console.

“But you…” He stopped and took a breath, then continued. “You’re human. You die, that’s it. No more Sherlock. And the world needs you, Sherlock.”

Sherlock stayed silent for what seemed an age. The only sound in the TARDIS was John’s breathing.

Eventually, Sherlock said, “Harry and I.”

John frowned. He looked down, then up again. “What?”

“You said ‘Harry and me, we can handle it’. You should have said ‘Harry and I’.”

John sighed deeply. “Christ, Sherlock. Just…” He didn’t finish.

Harry coughed quietly from where she had been standing off to the side, wisely not making a sound. “He’s right, you know.”

“I know he’s right!” John snapped at her. She blinked, and he sighed. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Well, for what it’s worth,” Harry started, walking forward, “I think he should come. We need someone to keep you in check.”

This time John ignored her, staring at Sherlock through the time rotor, the curved glass warping the image. “I can’t have your death on my conscience, Sherlock. You have no idea, the horrors that are out there.” He jabbed a finger towards the door again.

“How about the other humans?” Sherlock asked, almost bitterly. “Was it too dangerous for them as well? Did they all die?”

“How do you know about the others?” Harry asked curiously. John sighed in defeat and stared down at the console.

“It was relatively simple,” Sherlock explained. “There were several clues: the way you presented to me the view, as if you’d done it before; the fact that some of the products in your medical bay are from Earth; and the fact that you appear to be wearing Earth clothing, which I’d imagine wouldn’t be that clothes your race would normally wear. Quite a tenuous link, I know, but it turned out to be true.”

Harry blinked, then looked at John. “I’m keeping him, even if you’re not,” she told him.

John threw up his hands in exasperation. “Fine,” he told her. “Fine. But he’s your responsibility, all right? Anything he does, you’re accountable.”

She nodded once. “Got it.”

Sherlock opened his mouth, but John held up a hand. “And,” he said, “We do this by my rules. Okay?”

They both nodded.

“All right.” John took a breath and turned to Harry. “What do you know about where Dad is?”

Harry took a deep breath, and began to tell the story. “The TARDIS malfunctioned, or so we thought. We were on the trail of a ship that kept circling Earth, looking as if it might land at any moment. You know how it is, John. Protect Earth at all costs.

“Anyway, suddenly this ship started smoking from behind, and falling towards the Atlantic Ocean. Dad, of course, tried to make the TARDIS materialise onto the ship, so he could help the occupants. Except, when we arrived on the ship, there was no one there. It was deserted. We ran a scan, and there were no living creatures except for us.”

John felt a shiver run down his spine. “Then what happened?”

“We went exploring. Dad told me to stay in the control room, but I ignored him,” she said this with a small grin and a shrug, as if it was bound to happen. “He went one way, and I went the other, and half an hour later I arrived back at the control room. He was nowhere to be seen.

“I waited for him for a while, then got bored and ran another scan, to find out where he was. Only there was nothing. Only one life form on board, and that was me.”

John felt another shiver. “He disappeared?”

Harry nodded grimly. “I searched all around the ship, but couldn’t work out where he’d gone or anything. There were no exits, no portals to be found. Nothing. So I carefully landed the ship on the moon somewhere in the 1960s, took the TARDIS, and came and found you. End of story.”

All three felt as if the temperature in the TARDIS had suddenly decreased, but a quick glance at the thermostat said otherwise. “That’s impossible,” John said, for the umpteenth time that day.

“Evidently not impossible,” Sherlock argued, “since it happened. It is merely highly improbable.”

“That’s what the original Sherlock Holmes said,” Harry said quietly.

“I am the original Sherlock Holmes,” said Sherlock Holmes. “I’m not in a book, that’s all. I’m real.”

“I think I’ve lost track of what ‘real’ is,” John muttered, leaning one hand on the console. “Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere. We’re focusing on Dad. Now, this ship. Species of origin?”

“Ah,” Harry said. She bit her lip, her normally happy face taut with nerves. “The ship was a dalek ship.”

John’s hand slipped off the console, and he stumbled before jerking upright. He tried to speak, but his mouth was as dry as a grave.

He cleared his throat. “Dalek?” he croaked out. “The daleks have Dad?”

Sherlock’s eyes flicked between the two. “The daleks are bad news?” he guessed.

John slowly turned his head to look at Sherlock. He looked haggard, as though he had aged decades in only a few moments.

John took a breath and began to speak. “A long time ago, many years ago, our people entered into a war, the largest war in the universe. The Time War. Countless people died, men and woman and children. Everybody. It was terrible. The thing is, the war was time-locked, which meant that nothing could escape. Except Dad managed to get out, along with me and Harry. He left us on a safe planet, then went to stop the war.”

Harry took up the story. “He managed to end the war, but at a terrible cost: he killed each and every being, from both sides of the war. He committed genocide, and he’s never been the same since. So we’re the last of our kind, us three. Or we were, until we found this dalek ship. Apparently we weren’t the only survivors.”

Sherlock nodded thoughtfully. “So it’s true then, that you were a soldier?”

“We’re a family of soldiers, us and Dad,” Harry said. “Dad hates it. He always felt bad for dragging us into the war. What he never understood was that we would have fought, whether he’d wanted us to or not.”

“You and your father? How about your mother? I presume, of course, that you had a mother.” As soon as Sherlock asked the question, he regretted saying anything; but it was too late to take it back.

There was a moment of terrible silence ad John and Harry exchanged a long look. “She died,” John said eventually. “Dad tried to get to her, we all did, but she was too slow. She was killed by a dalek.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s all right,” he said. “She didn’t even know she had been found. She wouldn’t have felt any pain. Well, not much.” He bit his lip and stared into space for a few moments.

“To be honest, I think that was what made Dad do it,” Harry said. “He was so angry, at the daleks for killing her, at the Time Lords for fighting; at everything, really. I think that’s why he decided to end it, at the greatest cost.”

“The loss of an entire species,” Sherlock finished.

“It was supposed to be two species,” John reminded him bitterly. “Apparently, the daleks managed to escape, Rassilon only knows how.”

“I doubt even he would,” Harry muttered.

“If the three of you escaped,” Sherlock said thoughtfully, “surely a dalek could have got out as well?”

John and Harry both shook their heads. “Impossible,” John said.

“Dad sealed up the breach immediately, then went back to that same instant and ended it,” Harry explained. “That’s what he told me.”

“You said the ship had no occupants. Is it possible one ship was left out of the war, and that was what you found?” Sherlock speculated.

More shaking of heads. “The daleks wouldn’t do that, they’re too devious,” Harry told him.

“They’d rather blow up their own ship than leave it vulnerable,” John added.

“These daleks,” Sherlock said, “what do they look like?”

John turned to the console and typed something in quickly. A picture came up on the screen of a gold metal machine that somewhat resembled a pepper-pot.

“It doesn’t look like much,” Harry said, “but that is one of the most terrifying, deadly creatures in the universe.”

“Creature?” Sherlock asked. “Is it alive? It looks like a robot.”

“That’s just the shell, the armour,” John said. “Inside is a small, weak creature that relies on being a pepper-pot to survive.”

Sherlock nodded in understanding. John turned to Harry. “You parked the ship on the moon?”

“Yup,” she confirmed. “First time I’ve ever had to steer a dalek ship. The controls are surprisingly easy.”

“Just because you passed Foreign Vehicles with flying colours…” John said, and Harry laughed.

“You had classes in flying other species’ vehicles?” Sherlock guessed.

“We had a lot of classes, too many to talk about now,” John said. “We need to go to the moon.”

Sherlock mentally added that to the rapidly-growing list of sentences he never thought he would hear John say.


	4. Children of the Oncoming Storm

Harry took the controls. The TARDIS spun in space and dematerialised, landing in the dalek ship.

John stepped out first, Harry close behind. Sherlock followed them both cautiously, peering out of the door before joining them in the dalek control room.

He looked around. The room was round and gold, with plenty of shiny, curved surfaces. There were circles everywhere, on the walls, on the floor, in the lighting. The floor sounded like a thick metal as they walked over it, and the whole room was smoother than any Earth surface Sherlock had ever encountered.

He approached the control panel, covered with more round things: lights, button, and screens displaying rotating patterns of circles. John was checking some readouts on a screen above their heads, while Harry was hunting around the walls, pressing on circles and tapping as if trying to find something.

Sherlock decided to go over to Harry. "What are you looking for?" he asked.

"Green box," she said, then added, "Your people call it a black box, I think. Never got the hang of Earth colours. Red alert, indeed," she scoffed, then went back to poking around the walls.

Sherlock gave up, and went over to John. "Don't mind her," he said, "she's just tense because she's worried about Dad." He turned to Sherlock. "Look, no offence, but there's really not much for you to do here. If you like, you could take a look around at the ship? It's perfectly safe, there's only the three of us here. I checked." He tapped the screen above them, and Sherlock nodded.

He walked off quickly, trying not to let either of them see his face, so they wouldn't know how hurt he was feeling at being sent away like one might a child. Sherlock was not used to not being the smartest in a room (unless Mycroft was there, of course), and it irked him especially that John was more knowledgeable than him about something, other than women. He had always seen John as somewhat inferior, at least in intelligence; and to have him suddenly prove to be just as intelligent, if not more so, was discombobulating to say the least.

Sherlock paused when he came across a bubble-shaped window, set deep into the wall of the corridor. Outside, there was nothing but darkness, and the moon's surface. He found if he looked far to the left, he could just see the edge of a large, light-coloured shape in the distance, which he presumed was the Earth, millions upon millions of miles away. Sherlock stared at this sight for a while, one he surely would never see again, before sighing and continuing his trip around the corridors.

He wandered around the ship for a while, at least an hour, contemplating what he had learned about his friend. John had kept a secret from the whole world, even him, for years. He wondered just how much of John's past life was real.

The detective started thinking about what they had said about him being a book character. How much of his life was real? How did he exist in a Victorian book as well as in real life? Was that possible, in any reality?

Then Sherlock saw something that made him stop in his tracks. He froze for a full minute, breathing shallowly; then spun around and hightailed it back to the control room, where John and Harry were.

-o0o-

Sherlock skidded to a halt on the smooth flooring about a foot from the door, then took a breath to compose himself before calmly walking in.

He tapped John on the shoulder. "Yeah?" John said, without looking away from what he was doing.

"There are no daleks on this ship, correct? Just us."

"Mm-hmm," John said.

"These daleks, they are incredibly dangerous, and capable of destroying the universe?" Sherlock asked casually.

"Yep."

"And when they move around, they wouldn't happen to say, 'Exterminate', would they?"

"That's right-what? How do you know that?" John said, turning around in panic. For the first time, he took in Sherlock's flushed face and shortness of breath. Harry turned around as well, staring at Sherlock as if scared of the answer he would give.

"The truth is," Sherlock said cautiously, "I think I just saw one of them. A dalek, I mean." He saw the twin looks of horror on John and Harry's faces, and stopped talking.

"Please tell me you're joking," John said desperately.

Sherlock grimly shook his head.

"How did you survive?" Harry asked.

"I ducked down a side corridor. It didn't see me," he answered.

"Where was it?" John asked. He pulled up a three-dimensional map of the ship on the screen.

Sherlock considered the map, selecting a floor and zooming in upon it. "I went down there," he tracked his route with his finger, "and around that bend. I remember that bend. I think it was here," he said, pointing out a corridor. "Yes, that's right."

"Over the other side of the ship," Harry noted. "You ran all the way back?"

Sherlock nodded. "What do we do?"

John puffed out his cheeks. "I've found nothing," he admitted.

"Me neither," Harry said. "Confrontation?"

John nodded regretfully. "Looks like we'll have to."

Sherlock's eyes flicked from one sibling to the other. "You're going to confront it?" he asked cautiously. "One of the most feared creatures in the universe?"

"How else are we going to find anything out, Sherlock?" John demanded back. "We've got nothing to go on. We have no idea where or when Dad is. All we know is that the daleks may have him. So, don't you think the best thing to do might be ask a dalek?"

"It's not ideal," Harry admitted, "but if Sherlock Holmes has any ideas, I for one would love to hear them."

"I have nothing," Sherlock said. Then a thought occurred to him. "Do you speak the same language as the daleks?"

"The TARDIS has an inbuilt translation filter. Works for everything except Gallifreyan," John said. "So, are we ready to face a dalek?"

"No," Harry admitted.

"Me neither," said her brother. "Let's go." And with that, they stepped out of the control room, prepared to go on a dalek-hunt.

"Hold up a sec," Harry said as they passed the TARDIS. She disappeared inside, returning a few moments later with two large guns. She tossed one to John, and he caught it, stumbling slightly under the unexpected weight.

"Where did you get these?" he demanded. "Dad never allows guns in his TARDIS!"

"There's a room full of weapons, all catalogued by date," Harry explained. "I think the TARDIS likes keeping spoils of war. He's never found the room, but she showed me."

John appraised the gun. "Will this work on daleks?"

"Should do," she said. "They had a picture of a dalek next to them."

John appraised the gun. It was large, large enough that it had to be to be held with two hands, and the barrel resembled a dalek's gunstick. He guessed it had been modified from a dalek somehow. "Do you know where this came from?" he asked.

"No idea," she shrugged. "You?"

"Nope."

Sherlock had been watching the exchange silently, but at this point he spoke up. "Were there only two dalek guns in the room, then?" he asked casually. Too casually.

Harry's eyes flicked guiltily towards him. "Um, yes," she said quickly. "Sorry about that."

He shrugged it off. "Shall we go then?"

"Yes," John agreed, and hurried out. The other two followed close behind.

It didn't take them long to find the dalek. They were walking down the third corridor of the second floor when there was a noise nearby. John motioned for the others to stop, and peered around the corner cautiously.

He jerked his head back and leaned against the wall. "It's there," he mouthed, signalling with his head.

Harry wordlessly held up five fingers, then four, counting down. When she got to zero, she and John leaped out into the corridor with practised timing, levelling their guns at the dalek. Sherlock stood behind them, staring the dalek down and trying not to look too useless.

The dalek didn't notice them at first. It kept rolling towards them until its eyestalk swivelled around to face them. Then it stopped in its tracks, ten feet or so away from them. "Identify yourselves!" it called out in an emotionless, robotic voice.

"John and Harry Watson," John said.

"We are the children of the Oncoming Storm," Harry added.

The dalek seemed to nod in recognition. "You are associates of the Doctor?"

"That's right," John said loudly. "We come in the name of the Doctor."

"You are companions of the Doctor. It is confirmed that companions of the Doctor will show mercy to the daleks."

"Oh, yeah?" Harry asked, and aimed a shot over the dalek's head. A bright beam flew out the barrel of her gun and scorched the corridor wall. It moved backwards slightly as if flinching. "Check your records again," she said. "We're not companions. We're family."

The dalek paused, checking the records. "Negative," it said eventually. "The Doctor has no family."

"Yes, well, he would say that, wouldn't he?" John said impatiently. "Look, our identities don't matter. It's two on one. Three on one," he corrected himself hastily, glancing back at Sherlock. "We've got some questions for you, and  _our_  records state that you will answer them, unless you want my sister to shoot lower down next time." Harry raised her gun in confirmation.

The dalek pointed its gun at Sherlock. "You are unarmed," it informed him. "You will be exterminated! Exterminate! Exterminate!"

It was interrupted by another warning shot, this time from John. "Shut it," he told the dalek firmly. "He may be unarmed, but we're not. Now, where is the Doctor?"

The dalek seemed to finally realise that it should answer. "The location of the doctor is unknown," it said haltingly.

"He went missing on this ship," Harry said. "This dalek ship. Am I seriously expected to believe that you don't know where he is?"

Sherlock cleared his throat. "Er, John?"

"Not now, Sherlock," John said apologetically, not looking around. "Where is he?" he demanded again of the dalek, holding up the gun again.

"The location of the doctor is unknown," the dalek repeated.

"Is that all you know how to say?" Harry demanded.

"John-" Sherlock began to say again, but was cut off.

"Okay," John said. "What is the last known location of the Doctor?"

This time, there was a pause as before the answer, as the dalek checked its internal records. "The last known location of the Doctor is the destruction of the Cult of Skaro," it said. "The current location of the Doctor is unknown."

"Yeah, I got that bit," John said. He puffed out his cheeks, thinking hard.

Sherlock took his pause as an opportunity to speak. He leaned towards John and quickly said, "John, I really feel you ought to know that that was not the dalek I saw earlier."

He nodded absent-mindedly. "Yeah, okay…what?" he demanded, jerking his head back to stare at Sherlock.

"This one has a dent in it," he explained quietly, pointing to the dalek's head. "The one I saw didn't."

Harry had heard their conversation. "How certain are you, on a scale of one to ten?" she muttered, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the dalek.

"Eleven," Sherlock said with certainty.

"Shit," John said. "There's more than one on board."

"You said the Cult of Skaro was wiped out," Harry called to the dalek. "How many were in the cult?"

"The Cult of Skaro was small," the dalek intoned. "Only five thousand daleks. A small fraction of our race!"

"Your race wiped out ours," John said. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you now."

"You are companions of the doctor," the dalek repeated. "You will show mercy, or you will be exterminated! Exterminate!" It began to wave its gun around, pointing it at each of them in turn. "Exterminate! Exterminate!"

"Go to Hell," Harry said, and squeezed the trigger. There was a flash and a bang, and then the dalek was no more.

Sherlock winced at the explosion. When the smoke cleared, he saw that the dalek had been completely blown apart, with shards of metal and some unpleasant-looking organic matter lying scattered around the corridor. Only the base was left standing.

John looked over at Harry. "Nice shot," he commented.

"Thanks," she said, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily.

John cautiously approached the remains of the dalek. He reached out with one foot and pushed the base away from him. It rolled a few inches before coming to a stop against the wall.

Meanwhile, Sherlock was listening intently to something in the distance. "John, these daleks…they wouldn't have a distress signal, would they?"

John's ears pricked up. He, too, heard a faint 'Exterminate!' sound. "Which way is it?"

Sherlock pointed behind him, the way that they had come. "That way, I think."

All three listened for a few moments. The sound was definitely getting louder.

"Right now, getting away from here is sounding like a good option," John said.

Harry nodded. "And fast."

They took off as one, heading down the way that the dalek had come. John was leading at the front, while Harry took up the rear, turning around every so often to check for approaching daleks. They ran for several minutes, taking as many corners and twists and turns as they could to try and throw the daleks off their trail. As they ran, Sherlock's breathing became ragged, while John's and Harry's remained normal.

With every step, John kept thinking,  _this is impossible. There were no signs of life on the ship. No one could enter. No one could leave. How are there daleks on board? They didn't know where Dad is. Where is Dad? Is he still alive?_  These thoughts kept running through his head, over and over again.

Eventually they arrived back in the control room. John tore through the TARDIS door without hesitation, holding it open for Sherlock and Harry before locking it safely behind them. He and Harry leaned against the door, while Sherlock bent over the railing, gasping for breath.

"How?" Harry gasped when she was able. "How did they get onto the ship?"

John closed his eyes and slid his back down the door. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know."

Sherlock staggered upright. "You said there were no other signs of life on board," he said accusatorily. "You also said the daleks were alive, inside the armour."

"I know," John apologised, eyes still closed as if in pain. "I'm sorry. I put you in danger. You could have been killed. I'm sorry." He sighed and leaned his head back against the door.

-o0o-

After some time sitting in silence, Harry stood up and walked through the console room to the door, and disappeared down a corridor. Sherlock glanced over at John. He didn't appear to be moving, so Sherlock stood up and followed Harry through into the corridor.

The corridors, like the console room, were coloured in oranges and golds, with eerie green lights every couple of feet. Interestingly enough, the corridors seemed to be in a hexagonal shape, yet the doors set into the walls every so often appeared to be flat. Sherlock guessed it was an alien mind trick. He hated guessing.

Sherlock wandered down the many corridors, turning and twisting so often that even he became lost. Sometimes, he would poke his head into a room as he passed. He found an odd collection of rooms, including a swimming pool, an antique-looking library, a modern-looking library, several empty bedrooms, a broom closet, two kitchens, a prison cell, and a large artist's studio.

Eventually he found Harry, sitting on a washing machine in an otherwise empty room. Sherlock could find no explanation for someone having a room containing only a washing machine that did not seem to be connected to anything, but he decided not to say anything. Instead, he hovered just inside the door, clearing his throat awkwardly.

Harry glanced up. "Hi," she mumbled, then went back to tracing patterns on the ground with the toe of one boot.

Sherlock took this as an invitation, and walked cautiously over to the washing machine, perching on one corner. It was a squeeze, but they both fit. "You feel guilty." It wasn't a question.

"Yes," she admitted. "Of course I do. You nearly got killed. You're my responsibility, remember? Anything happens to you, it's my fault. And John would never forgive me if something did." She gave him a small smile. "Although, from what I've seen, you seem quite capable of taking responsibility for yourself." It wasn't a question.

Sherlock pursed his lips and nodded. "I think so," he said. "John doesn't, though. He seems worried about me."

Harry rolled her eyes. "Don't mind him. He gets like that sometimes, when someone's in danger. He always has to play the hero, running around, making everybody else is all right. He never gives a second thought to his own safety, though. If anything, it's us who should be worried about him, not the other way around."

Sherlock thought about John, and the things he had done. Shooting a cabbie on the day after they met. Grabbing Moriarty by the throat by the swimming pool, so Sherlock could escape. Chinning the chief superintendent. Opting to stay in a train carriage to try and stop other people dying, even though he could have saved himself. Storming into a house filled with druggies, to rescue a neighbour he hardly knew. There were so many times in which John had put others before himself, so many times that Sherlock had never given a second thought. Eventually, he answered Harry's statement with a nod.

She continued speaking. "He'll come around, you'll see. But if you ask me, we're getting nowhere with finding Dad. Do you have any ideas?"

He shook his head helplessly, a feeling he was still getting used to. "You're the alien expert," he told her.

Harry smiled sadly. "Not in this case. Anyway, I think John needs to think about something else. What do you think?"

"I'm only human," Sherlock said. "I'm just his flatmate."

Harry smiled sadly again. "No, you're not. Well, you are human, but you're not just his flatmate. You're also his best friend. Look, he hasn't told me much, but from what I can tell he went to Afghanistan soon after he left the Time War. And when he came back, he met you. You helped him to heal, from both wars. He's stubborn, you must know that. Why do you think he let himself be persuaded to keep you on board so easily? I'll tell you why. He needs you, and you need him. That's just how it is."

Sherlock glanced down, frowning. "What do you mean?"

"I remember, you're a sociopath. Well, John cares about you, and you care about him even if you don't know it. Now, come on. I know you have lots of questions. Why don't you ask some of them?"

He considered. "Tell me about Gallifrey," he said eventually. "Please," he added as an afterthought.

Harry's eyes took on a faraway look as she remembered her home of long ago. "The colours are the opposite of Earth," she said dreamily. "Vibrant oranges and reds and golds. There are two suns, but the air never gets too hot or too cold, like magic. And you can lie on the red grass and gaze up at the burnt orange sky as the suns set and the twin moons rise…but you don't care about all that," she suddenly said dismissively.

"Technical facts: it's the home world of the Time Lords, in the constellation of Kasterborous. Two suns because it's in a binary star system, and two moons and a ring system like Jupiter in your solar system. No, Saturn, not Jupiter. That's right." She paused, thinking. "Any other questions?"

"What you said about lying on the red grass…" Sherlock said carefully. "Does John like that as well?"

"Oh, yes," Harry said with a half-smile. "We used to have family picnics on this one hill overlooking the capitol, called Schlenk Rise. The whole planet was beautiful. There were so many different creatures and plants, and nothing ever went extinct. Of course, it's all gone now," she said in a suddenly businesslike tone, bringing them back to the present. She looked back down at her feet, going back to tracing patterns with one foot.

Sherlock watched her for a few moments. "You're writing something," he decided eventually.

She glanced up at him, concentrating on the floor. "I am," she admitted, and went back to writing.

A few more moments passed. "What are you writing?"

"Your name," Harry told him.

"Can I see it?"

In response, she dug in her back pocket and pulled out a small notebook and pen. She clicked the pen, and several sparks shot out of the tip before a nib appeared.

Harry opened the notepad to a random page and concentrated, drawing in large, swirling letters. Sherlock tried to see it, but she held it up so he couldn't see.

After a few moments, she held the notepad out to him. "Here you go."

Sherlock took it from her, the notepad looking smaller in his large hands. He studied the picture. There were circles upon circles, inside other circles, all drawn in one smooth, looping line.

"Interesting," he observed. "So this is what Gallifreyan looks like?"

"Yeah. If it was any other language in the universe, you'd be able to read it," Harry told him. "But Gallifreyan doesn't translate in any form, written or spoken."

"Why is that?"

She frowned. "I don't know. Security, I suppose, so no one can steal the TARDIS. There used to be an instruction manual, written in Gallifreyan. I wonder what happened to it?"

"So, Time Lords," Sherlock said, in an attempt to steer the conversation away from philosophical questions. "Are they biologically different from humans? I mean, if you can live for longer, there must be some differences."

Harry took a deep breath. "There are several," she began. "For one, we have two hearts, which is an excellent respiratory bypass system. But when we do die, we can regenerate into an entirely new body…"

They continued their conversation, in the small room that was completely bare save for one unexplained washing machine. And when they were done, when Sherlock knew all he needed to know and more, they walked together out to the console room, where John stood staring at the monitor.

He looked up when they walked in. "I think I've worked it out," he told them, as if nothing had happened. "The daleks tricked their own system into not counting them as life forms, so they didn't show up on the scans." His voice was thick with contempt for the species.

Harry and Sherlock exchanged a glance. "Then why didn't Sherlock or I see any, when we explored the ship?" Harry asked John. "At different times," she added.

He sighed deeply. "I don't know," he admitted. "But it's the best I can do."

"Maybe if you thought about something else for a while," she suggested. "Leave the daleks alone for a bit." John seemed unconvinced. "Look, I've been thinking," Harry pressed on. "Maybe the two things are interlinked somehow – Dad and Sherlock. I don't know how, but it just feels right, somehow."

John nodded grudgingly. "I agree," he said. "We're getting nowhere fast, and there's no way we can take on the daleks by ourselves. We need to regroup somewhere else, sort it out." He sighed. "I think Victorian England would be as good a place as any, don't you?"

Harry exchanged a triumphant glance with Sherlock. "That's a very good idea, John," she said.

 


	5. Appointment with an opthalmologist

 

 

 

A dark alleyway sat quietly in the depths of Central London, ignored by the world as it went by. The only occupant was a thin cat, huddled in a crack in the wall.

Suddenly, there was a disturbance in the air. A wind started, seemingly out of nowhere, and a vworp, vworp sound could be heard. A glowing blue box appeared slowly, and the cat ran out of the alley in fright. The TARDIS faded in and out of existence, and came to settle in the middle of the alleyway.

The door squeaked open. John strode out, Harry and Sherlock following close behind.

"Does your father fly that on his own?" Sherlock asked incredulously, glancing back at the blue box. Between the three of them, they had only barely managed to get it to settle on Earth.

"Normally, yeah," Harry said. "He is linked to the TARDIS symbiotically, though."

"Got his imprint on the biomechaniser," John elaborated, in response to Sherlock's confused look. It still didn't make sense, but Sherlock left the topic alone.

"Where are we?" Harry enquired.

"Central London, near Tower Bridge, at the turn of the 19th century. Not too far from St Bart's, actually."

Sherlock opened his mouth. "No, we can't go there," John said before he had a chance to speak. He closed his mouth again, pursing his lips.

"Now, tell me," Harry said. "How much do you know about Arthur Conan Doyle?"

Sherlock considered the question. "Not much," he reluctantly admitted. "I think I studied one or two of his stories in university, but I deleted them. He write the Marie Celeste, and the Professor Challenger series, I believe. He's not exactly a household name."

"Hmm," Harry said. "He should be. Anyway, you're about to meet him." She grinned at him and strode off into the city. John followed her, after clapping Sherlock on the back.

Sherlock frowned and hurried after them, screwing up his nose slightly at the smell. He'd never before considered what Victorian London would smell like, or else he had deleted it. It turned out that it smelled of rotten food and drains, mixed in with the stink of sewerage to create an altogether unpleasant smell that would have no place in anywhere that was owned by Mrs Hudson.

The day was cloudy, and the streets were dirty. London seemed overbearingly grey, especially compared to what he was used to. People hurried along the streets, going about their business, not so much as glancing at the time-travelling trio. Sherlock idly wondered why the locals did not notice, or at least did not comment on, their strange attire, but put it down to some unexplained alien technology. Surely nobody could be that unobservant. Could they?

When Sherlock caught up with John and Harry, he glanced back towards the alley where the TARDIS was. "If it just…vanishes, wouldn't it create a vacuum?"

John nodded. "It should, but it takes air from the space where it is materialising to, and places it instead where it is leaving from. A rather good system, on the whole; unless of course it is going to a place with a different atmosphere, when it needs to reciprocate the gases…basically, it's magic."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "So where are we going? Exactly?"

"So many questions!" Harry laughed. "Okay. We're heading to number 2 Devonshire Place, an address where Conan Doyle is known to have set up a practice as an ophthalmologist. We may be his first clients."

Eventually, they arrived at a row of bricked, terraced houses in central London, similar to the style found in the 21st century. Harry went up and knocked at the door of number 2, standing back to look up at the row of windows above.

A young man answered the door, peering out. "Hello," John said with a smile. "We're here to see Dr Doyle."

"Do you have an appointment for all three of you?" the man asked suspiciously.

"Er, yes," Harry said. "Tell Dr Doyle that there's a Sherlock Holmes here to see him, would you, my good man?"

The man looked them over once more, then disappeared back inside the building. The door opened a minute later, and they were ushered through into a dark hallway. "Right this way, sirs."

They were led through to an office with a large wooden desk. A pile of crumpled morning papers sat upon the left side of the desk, and a pipe-rack sat on the right, within the reach of someone sitting at the desk. In front of the desk were three wooden chairs, evidently placed there by the assistant upon their arrival; much the worse for wear, and damaged in several places. Upon one wall stood a small fireplace, with a crackling fire inside.

"Dr Doyle will be right with you, gentlemen," the assistant said, and left silently.

Harry and John looked at each other, satisfied, but Sherlock frowned. "Did he not notice that you were female?" he asked Harry.

"Perception filter," she muttered quickly.

The door flew open, and in walked a tallish man with dark hair and an impressive moustache. He surveyed the three of them with keen eyes, travelling first over John, then Harry, and coming to rest upon Sherlock. The dark eyes stared into the blue-green ones for a few moments, before the man looked back at John. "My apologies for the wait, sir," he said by way of greeting. "My assistant informed me I had three male clients, although it seems to me that one is female." He looked at Harry.

She frowned in his direction. "Very, uh, perceptive of you, sir. Most people would not notice."

He gave a thin-lipped smile. "Ah, my dear lady, but I am not most people." He closed the door and strode to the desk, seating himself in the cracked leather armchair and warming his hands before the fire. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

John shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He started to speak, slipping easily into the local syntax. "Mr Doyle, I am afraid that we interrupt you not to seek your medical services, but instead to ask you some questions. We are of the police force, you see."

"I see," Doyle said. "Then I am sure you would not mind if I were to inquire as to your credentials?"

"Not at all," John said, and passed over a piece of paper with a smile. Doyle glanced over it, and nodded, handing it back. Sherlock caught a glimpse of the paper as he did so. It appeared to be blank.

Doyle steepled his fingers, resting his elbows upon the vast wooden desk. "Ask what you will," he said, his eyes flicking again towards Sherlock, before swivelling back to face John.

John cleared his throat nervously. "Well," he began, "to begin, I am Detective Inspector Watson, and this is my…wife, Harriet. And this is my colleague, Sherlock Holmes." He stressed Sherlock's name, and all three watched Doyle closely for any reaction. There was none.

John seemed to be lost for words, so Sherlock smoothly took up the lead. "I wonder, sir, might I take a look at that cane?" He gestured towards a cane that stoop upon the hearth-rug, leaning against the fireplace.

"By all means," Doyle said without looking at it. Sherlock retrieved the cane quickly. He looked it over for barely a minute, before placing it back on the hearth-rug. "Well, Mr Holmes, what do you make of it?" Doyle enquired once Sherlock had settled back into his chair.

"Not much, I fear," Sherlock said. Talking like this was tiresome, but he kept talking regardless. "The cane is not yours, but that of a somewhat careless friend of yours? This seems unlikely though, as it appears to be the walking-stick of a country practitioner. He received the stick from a hospital recently, in return for his services."

Doyle was staring at Sherlock with a strange look upon his face. "Interesting," he mused. "You are observant indeed, my good man. Although I must confess, I had already deduced that from the stick some time ago."

"Ah, but I am not finished," Sherlock said. John gave Harry a nudge that seemed to say,  _this'll be good._

"The man is young, certainly less than thirty years old. He recently moved from Charing Cross Hospital to a country practice, judging from the inscription and the state of the stick. He is a patient of yours, rather absent-minded I must say, leaving his stick rather than his calling-card. He has a dog, larger than a terrier, smaller than a mastiff. At a guess, I'd say a spaniel, going by the teeth-marks the dog leaves in the stick when he takes it for a walk. So, we have Doctor James Mortimer, a young country practitioner in the habit of taking his dog for long walks. He makes his own cigarettes as well, if that is of any interest to you."

Doyle was staring at Sherlock, his expression between amusement and bemusement. "But surely this is impossible," he breathed. "A man who can read another man's life and history, from only his cane? I have dreamt of such a man, but never met someone who possesses the deductive skills to be capable of doing that."

Sherlock smiled modestly. "Hardly. I fear some of the details may be incorrect."

"For the most part, it is entirely true," Doyle assured him. "I am sure you are a great asset to the police force, my dear chap. Although I am not certain you are of the police," he added, glancing back towards Harry. "I admit I am not well acquainted with the ways of the police force; however, I would assume common practice would not be taking one's wife along on an investigation." He looked very deliberately towards John.

"I must confess, I have not been entirely truthful," John admitted. ""Harriet is not my wife, but my sister; and we are not from the police."

"Then who are you?" Doyle enquired.

"We are…travellers," Harry said. "From a place far, far away. Further than you can imagine. We are, er, making some inquiries on behalf of the proper authorities."

An amused smile played upon Doyle's face. "Very well, travellers. How might I help you in your enquiries?"

"You have said that you dreamed of a man similar to my colleague," John said. "Could you tell me more about him?"

Doyle frowned. "I cannot imagine why; but nonetheless, I will tell you. I dreamed of a man with an unusual name, who was able to look at a person and read them, from their clothing and possessions to their stance and haircut. Someone who could identify an engineer by his tie, or a newspaper editor from his left thumb. He was remarkably similar to your friend, in both appearance and voice."

John leaned forward in his chair, resting his arms on the somewhat battered desk. "This man. Did he say anything to you? Anything out of the ordinary?"

"I don't believe so. But what use would you have with the stuff of dreams? The man does not exist, surely."

John cast a sidelong glance at Sherlock. "I'm sure he doesn't." He raised himself to his feet, Sherlock and Harry following suit. "Thank you very much, Mr Doyle. You have been a great help to our investigation."

Doyle stood up also. "Must you leave? I have hardly helped you at all."

"On the contrary, you have helped a great deal." John shook Doyle's perplexed hand, and began to head for the door. "Thank you for your time, good sir. I hope we did not distract you from any task of urgency."

"It was no trouble, my dear chap." Doyle told him. "I was not engaged in anything important. I was merely composing a letter to a member of the House of Dalek."

The three travellers froze as one, turning slowly to face Doyle. "What did you say?" Harry managed to say first, all thoughts of speaking with the times forgotten.

"I said that it was no trouble."

"No, after that." John was staring intently at the man.

Doyle frowned yet again. "I said that I was composing a letter to a member of the House of Dalek. Is that of any significance?"

They returned to their seats. "Tell us about the House of Dalek," John suggested casually.

Doyle's keen eyes flicked from face to face. "Do you not know of them? Why, surely everybody in Britain knows of the Royal House of Dalek. They have done great service to our gracious Queen many times, more than I would venture to count. I received a letter from a minor member, who wished to thank me for a small service I performed to the crown earlier this year. I was replying to his kind message."

"And what might the name of this minor member be?" Harry inquired.

"Why, he is a doctor," Doyle said, looking from one to the other. "Doctor Theta Dalek."

-o0o-

"Theta was Dad's nickname at the Academy," John explained. "Theta Sigma, Thete for short."

He, Sherlock, and Harry were walking briskly through the somewhat chilly London streets.

"So you think he's sending you a message?" Sherlock asked, feeling especially cold without his coat. John and Harry did not seem to notice the low temperature, as they strode swiftly on.

"He must be," Harry said excitedly. "I knew it! I knew they were connected somehow!" She punched the air in triumph.

"Keep your voice down," John hissed, glancing around them. Harry's raised voice had attracted a few raised eyebrows, but the people around them soon averted their eyes and went about their day silently.

"Told you so," Harry said in a stage whisper.

"What was the address he gave you?" Sherlock asked.

John opened his hand and took out the piece of foolscap paper, unfolding it as he walked. Then he stopped dead in the middle of the cobbled street, causing Harry to bump into him from behind. "Watch it!" she said indignantly.

John ignored her, staring blankly at the address. Then he cleared his throat and looked up. "The address," he said slowly, "is 221B Baker Street."


	6. Not even the same species

Sherlock, John and Harry stood for a few moments in stunned silence. Sherlock and Harry stared at John, who was looking at the piece of paper in his hand as if willing it to change.

Eventually, Sherlock spoke. "We should probably get out of the street," he said slowly.

John blinked and shook his head, glancing around, seeming to realise where he was. "Yeah, we should," he agreed, and the three hurried to the side of the road.

"We should try to find Baker Street," Harry said. "I don't know London nearly as well as you two."

Sherlock looked around. "We're on the Marylebone Road," he decided. "That's Regent's Park over there."

"So if we go back this way," John said, "we should intersect with Baker Street." He pointed in the direction from whence they had come.

"Turn right and we're there," the detective agreed.

"Let's go then!" Harry said. "Allons-y!"

Sherlock started to walk, then stopped. "That was French," he told Harry. "Why didn't it translate into English? It's not Gallifreyan."

Harry rolled her eyes. "Seriously?" Sherlock continued to look at her questioningly, and she sighed. "I'll tell you as we walk. Come on!"

-o0o-

A quarter of an hour later, the time-travelling trio stood in front of 221B Baker Street, staring up at the familiar brick building. Well, familiar to most of them, at least.

"There's a museum here, normally," Harry commented. "It opened in 1990. I was there. Good ceremony."

"1990 was when I first met Mrs Hudson," Sherlock remarked. "She'd just bought this place then."

John and Harry exchanged a glance. "Curiouser and curiouser," Harry murmured, heading towards the door.

John followed his sister up the steps, and raised a hand to knock. He hesitated, his fist hovering a few inches from the door.

He glanced around, looking at Harry and Sherlock. "I can't do it," he muttered.

"Give it here," Harry muttered, pushing him aside. She, too, raised her hand, and was just about to knock when a greeting came from behind her. "Awright there?"

She spun around. A young man stood on the pavement behind Sherlock, watching her amusedly. "There ain't no use doin' that," he said helpfully. "That place 'as been empty for years, mate. No one there to hear ya."

"Oh," Harry said. "Um, would you happen to know anything about the person who used to live here?"

The man shrugged. "Nothin' I can tell you. Don' know if anyone ever lived there, if I'm hones' with ya."

"Thank you, sir," John said in a friendly tone. "Might I inquire as to your name?"

The man snorted with laughter. "I ain't no sir, mate," he said. "No sirs around here. I'm Alfie. Alfie Wiggins." He proffered a hand, and John shook it with a grin.

"Here," John said, fishing in his pocket and pulling out a pound and a shilling. "Have a guinea for your troubles, Alfie."

Alfie's eyes widened, staring at the money in John's palm. He glanced up at John's face, then his hand darted out and grabbed the money so quickly that even the two Time Lords did not see him do it. "Thank you, sir," he muttered, and then he was gone, disappearing down the road and around the corner in the blink of an eye.

Harry watched him go with a small smile. "One guinea? Very original of you," she commented.

"Shut up," John told her sternly, beginning to walk away.

"Why are you leaving?" she asked him. "We could still go inside."

"Not now," he told her, glancing around. "We've already attracted some unwanted attention by going to this house. We're going to go back to the TARDIS, and come back after dark. Okay?"

Harry shrugged. "Okay," she said, and began to follow her brother. Sherlock sighed and hurried after them, hoping that the TARDIS would not be as cold as the chilly London streets.

-o0o-

As it turned out, the TARDIS was pleasantly warm inside. Sherlock found himself no longer missing his coat.

"What did you mean, when you said that John was unoriginal?" he asked Harry when they got inside. She stopped in the doorway to talk to him, while John walked past them to the console.

Harry frowned for a moment, then grinned at the memory. "In the original Conan Doyle books," she explained, "Holmes had a band of street children called the Baker Street Irregulars. He would pay them for information, and a guinea was the prize he gave for a vital clue. They were run by a boy called Wiggins. That's where John got the idea from."

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. "Wiggins? I know someone called Bill Wiggins."

"He's a junkie," John said from the console.

"He's a chemist," Sherlock retorted.

"Chemist junkie."

"Chemist, occasional drug user."

"All right!" Harry yelled. "Stop fighting. The important thing here is that once again, your life is following our fiction, which shouldn't happen in any universe, let alone this one."

Sherlock stopped. "Wait. There are different universes?"

John sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Another time, Sherlock. Not now."

Sherlock, remembering that John was in charge, decided to shut up.

Harry wandered over to the console. "All right. What are we doing now?"

"We need to go back to 221B after dark. It's now around three in the afternoon, and it'll get dark in a couple of hours, although we really need to wait until night-time. I think we should wait here, rather than jumping forwards in time."

Harry blinked. "Why would we do that? We have a time machine!"

"I know," John said. "But there's a couple of things I need to do before we go. One thing we're missing is a sonic screwdriver. I presume Dad has his?"

"He did last time I saw him," she frowned. "It's definitely not in here, and it didn't show up in any scans on the dalek ship."

"So it's with him, wherever he is," John mused. "Right. I could probably make a makeshift one, given the right tools. Do you know where the workshop is?"

Harry shrugged helplessly. "No idea."

At this point, Sherlock stepped forward, hand half-raised. "The workshop, if I remember correctly, should be through that door," he pointed, "along the corridor a bit, up the first set of stairs, and make three right turns." He delivered the directions briskly, with a small smirk growing on his face. He was glad to be back in his element, knowing more than other people.

"Uh, thank you," John said. "Thanks, Sherlock. Really." And with that, he headed off through the door towards the workshop, leaving Sherlock and Harry alone once more.

Harry turned to Sherlock. "You've got a good memory," she commented.

"I do my best," he replied.

"Yeah, John said you were a clever one," she said. "It must be difficult for you, suddenly discovering that your best friend is smarter than you."

"Well, this is certainly a new experience." Sherlock wasn't normally one for discussing feelings, but then again today was not a normal day. "Difficult is not the word I would use to describe the situation."

"What word would you use?"

He considered the question for a moment. "Illogical," he decided. "I would say it is illogical."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Illogical. All right then, Spock."

"Spock?"

In answer, Harry raised one hand, palm forward, with her middle and ring fingers parted. "Surely you've heard of Spock," she said incredulously. "Star Trek? I studied him in school."

"You studied an Earth science fiction television show at school?" Now Sherlock looked incredulous.

"We got to choose another planet." Harry shrugged. "I disliked the teacher, and he disliked Earth, so I chose that." She wandered around the console, poking at various controls. "I wonder what that one does?" she murmured.

Sherlock said nothing, staring upwards at the top of the console. He jumped when Harry spoke to him. "Can you tell me about John's wife?"

"What do you want to know?" he asked cautiously.

"When he was talking about her, he was tense," she explained. "There was something he wasn't telling me. What was it?"

"I really think that would be better coming from your brother."

Harry was walking back around the console, approaching Sherlock slowly. "Mary Watson died, in the original books," she told him. "But she isn't dead, I can tell. Why is John living with you instead of with his wife?"

"I…I really don't think John would thank me for telling you…" She was standing right in front of him now, in a position that was similar to the way Irene Adler would stand, but with a different intention. While Irene had been trying to intimidate him, Harry was merely interested.

"Fine," he relented eventually. "I'll tell you, if you promise not to let John know that it was I who told you."

"Absolutely." Harry stepped to the side and sat down in the jump seat, looking up as if waiting for a story.

"All right." Sherlock He paused for a second, working out how to phrase his next words. "Mary Watson is a former foreign assassin who was trying to keep her past secret. She shot me here," he indicated above his heart, "and I nearly died. John left her after discovering her deception, and came back to stay at 221B, although I suspect now that his wife was not his only motivation. Oh, and she is pregnant, a fact which I deduced in the days leading up to their recent wedding."

Harry nearly fell off the jump seat. She stared at him, eyes wide. "Mary's pregnant?" she breathed.

Sherlock fought the urge to roll his eyes. "And she is a former assassin who tried to kill me."

"And she's human?" Harry said for confirmation.

"And I thought I had trouble sticking to the subject at hand," Sherlock muttered, leaning on the console. "Why does it matter whether she is pregnant?"

"If she is, the baby will be half human," Harry said soberly, "and half Time Lord."

Sherlock's hand slipped off the console. He stumbled for a moment, before hastily righting himself. "I never thought about that," he half-whispered. "What will that mean? How prevalent will the Time Lord part be?"

"Difficult to say," she mused, standing up. "I don't remember there ever being a half  _human_  baby before. There have been other species, of course, but…I don't know. D'you think John has thought about that yet?"

"We could ask him," Sherlock suggested, turning to head for the door; but Harry stopped him with a gentle hand on his arm.

"Not a good idea," she advised. "John tends to get a little…stroppy when he's building sonic instruments."

As if on cue, they heard a crash followed by a yell of frustration echoing through the TARDIS. Sherlock flinched, and Harry looked at him with an expression that said  _what can you do?_

"I see what you mean," Sherlock said delicately, turning back around. "We should leave him."

"Good thinking." Harry sat back down in the jump seat, and gestured to the seat next to her, indicating that Sherlock should sit down also. He did so carefully, facing slightly away from Harry. They settled down to wait until John had finished making a sonic screwdriver, however long that would take.

-o0o-

A couple of hours later, John emerged from the workshop, arm held aloft in triumph. He made his way quickly back to the console room, finding Harry and Sherlock talking animatedly on the jump seat.

"I did it!" he exclaimed, holding his hand out as evidence. In his palm sat a crude-looking instrument, about the size of a screwdriver, with a small red light diode at one end. It appeared to have been cobbled together from various bits and pieces of other instruments, and had a rubber grip that seemed to be fashioned from a melted eraser (Sherlock had experimented with enough of those to recognise a melted one).

Harry's features relaxed into a smile. "Well done," she congratulated him, glancing at her watch. "And in record time, too!"

"Shut up."

Sherlock spoke up. "How does a sonic screwdriver work? I would assume it would emit a high-pitched pulse of some kind?"

"Got it in one," John said. "It emits energy in the form of high-pitched soundwaves, and it's a very useful tool."

"And this can get us into 221B?" Sherlock looked doubtful.

In response, John held up the device and pointed it at the TARDIS door, holding it like one would a laser pointer. He pushed a button on the side, and the red tip lit up, emitting a buzzing noise. He flicked the switch a few times, the pitch of the buzzing higher with each flick; then the door suddenly flew open, exposing the darkened alleyway outside.

Sherlock stared at the open doorway, then at the sonic screwdriver in John's hand, then up at John's face. "That is extraordinary," he said in awe.

"Told you we had a few tricks up our sleeves." The smirk in Harry's voice was audible.

John glanced quickly between them, pressing the button again to close the TARDIS door. "You two had a nice chat, then?"

Harry raised an eyebrow at Sherlock, who was still frowning at the sonic screwdriver. No answer seemed forthcoming, so she spoke up. "It was very educational," she said. "I asked Sherlock about Mary."

John's body tensed up, his manner changing abruptly. "Did you now?" he asked, his voice suddenly dangerously calm. "And what did he tell you?"

By this time Sherlock was watching both of them anxiously, eyes flicking between the siblings, having noticed danger signs in John's behaviour. Harry, however, seemed not to notice anything amiss as she casually said, "He told me that Mary is an ex-assassin who tried to kill him during one of your cases."

For a moment, he seemed almost to relax, until Harry continued, "Oh, and that she is pregnant. With your child." Her expression was calm, passive; but her eyes scrutinised his face carefully.

A muscle twitched in John's jaw. He remained silent.

"Is it true, John?" Harry kept her voice level.

Finally, John sighed infinitesimally. He looked at the ground and hung his head. "Yes," he admitted. "It's true."

"So you're going to make a woman the first ever mother of a half-time lord, half-human, and she doesn't even know you're not human?" Harry demanded. "There's never been anything like this recorded, John. Ever! What were you thinking? You have no idea what the child will turn out like, how Time Lord it will be, how human-"

"DO YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW THAT ALREADY?" John yelled. "DO YOU THINK I DON'T ALREADY FEEL GUILTY FOR SUBJECTING HER TO THIS? DO YOU THINK I DON'T LIE AWAKE AT NIGHT, TRYING TO WORK OUT HOW TO TELL MY WIFE THAT WE'RE NOT EVEN THE SAME BLOODY  _SPECIES_?"

John abruptly stopped shouting, breathing heavily. Harry and Sherlock had taken a step backwards from him, startled by the outburst. He looked at each of their faces, somewhat taken aback by his sudden show of rage.

Still breathing heavily, John leaned backwards onto the console, lowering his eyes to the floor. "I'm sorry," he muttered. "I'm sorry."

Neither responded to him, instead watching him quietly. John ran a hand over his haggard face. His eyes looked old, older than Sherlock had ever seen them.

"I have thought about it, over and over," he said quietly, still looking at the floor. "I've been trying for months to work out how to say something, anything, to Mary. Then the Magnussen case came along, and it turned out that she was hiding her past as well, and…I don't know. There was never a good time. I was focused too much on working out why my best friend bloody existed, and I never told her. It's far too late now to do anything about it." He took a deep breath. "My wife Mary is pregnant, and there's nothing I can do about it."

The silence stretched between the trio, like a yawning chasm, until eventually Harry spoke. "You could tell her," she suggested quietly. "You can't do anything, but you can support her. Tell her everything about Time Lords, about how we grow up and mature, and wait and see. You've created a new species together, unique in the universe. You can discover it together." She moved forward and placed her hand on his shoulder. He tensed, but did not move. "You don't need to abandon your wife, John. You can still help her."

They stayed like that for a few moments, until finally John raised his head and stared into space. "You're right. Of course you're right. I can help her." A hint of a smile appeared upon John's face. "I can help her," he repeated, his voice gaining a little confidence. The life slowly began to reappear in his eyes. "When we get back," he said resolutely, "I will tell her. I  _will_  tell her. You see if I don't."

John turned to Harry. "Thank you so much," he said, and held his arms out. She stepped into his warm embrace, and they held each other for several moments.

"I've missed you," he whispered into her ear.

"I can see why," she whispered back. "You clearly need me to be able to do anything."

"Shut up," he told her, pulling back. But the tone was friendly, and they smiled at each other before John turned to Sherlock.

"Sorry for shouting at you," he said awkwardly.

"It's perfectly all right," Sherlock said mildly, "I'm used to you shouting at me."

"Yeah, well sorry anyway." John extended a hand, which Sherlock took firmly in his larger one. They stood for a moment, before Sherlock let go of John's hand and stepped back.

Harry glanced at her watch, specially engineered to tell the local time anywhere in the universe. This watch was her favourite piece of Time Lord technology, not to mention that it was one of the few pieces of Time Lord technology left in the universe. "It should be late enough by now," she told John and Sherlock. "There won't be anybody still outside at this hour."

"Shall we go then?" John asked, and the others nodded. He led the way towards the door.


	7. The cold never bothered them anyway

The thin cat had returned to the dark alleyway, and was huddled once again in a crack in the wall, eyes half-closed but still alert. It heard a familiar squeaking noise, and opened one eye to see what was happening.

Dust and dirt had collected around the base of the TARDIS, sitting in the grimy alleyway. The door opened and light spilled out, illuminating the dark, cracked brick walls. This time the cat did not run away in fright, but lazily watched as three people stepped out of the TARDIS and walked purposefully towards the road. As they walked, one of them held up a small stick, which lit up and buzzed. The TARDIS door squeaked closed behind them as they emerged onto the darkened street.

The familiar roads were deathly quiet, and dark, much darker than Sherlock was used to. Thin mist swirled around them, diluting what pitiful light emanated from the street-lamps.

As they passed one house, a curtain was thrown open and a large shaft of light spilled out onto Sherlock's face, making him blink. The light disappeared, and a few moments later the front door of the house slammed open. A familiar figure stood in the doorway. "Mr Holmes? Is that you?"

Sherlock's eyes took longer to adjust to the sudden light from the doorway than that of the Time Lords, who recognised the man right away. "Doctor Doyle," John greeted him. "Pleasure to see you again."

Sure enough, Arthur Conan Doyle hurried out onto the street. "The pleasure is all mine, my dear fellow," he assured John. "But whatever can you be doing out so late? And with your sister?"

Harry bristled. "What do you mean, 'with his sister'?" she demanded. John placed a warning hand on her arm, but she shook him off, staring at Doyle.

His eyes widened. "I meant no offence, I assure you madam. I merely meant to say that it is not safe around these parts at night. Heaven knows what scoundrels you may meet on your journey."

Harry opened her mouth to respond, but then she saw Sherlock standing behind Doyle, silently shaking his head. She closed her mouth with a snap.

John smiled easily for Doyle's benefit. "We were not going anywhere important," he told him. Then, on an impulse, he elaborated, "We merely sought to visit the address you gave us, the residence of Doctor Dalek."

Doyle's calm expression flickered for a moment, then his face smoothed into a polite smile. "I was under the impression you intended to visit the address after we spoke earlier," he stated.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, but did not mention the change in Doyle's expression.

"Ah," John said. "We did intend to go earlier, but were unfortunately waylaid by, er, circumstances beyond our control."

Harry rolled her eyes, realising that her brother was still no better at lying under pressure than she remembered. "But you must not let us keep you out here in the chilly night," she implored Doyle. "If you do not mind, we will be on our way."

"You say the air is chilly, madam, and yet you are not wearing so much as a coat to keep off the chill," Doyle replied. "Surely it is I who should be concerned for your health?" He pursed his lips. "I have a coat which I would be happy to lend you."

Harry smiled reassuringly. "It does not matter. The cold never bothered me."

"I feel I must insist, as a member of the medical profession," Doyle told her. "If you will wait here for one moment, I will fetch you something to wear." Before she could protest, he darted back inside.

Harry sighed and rolled her eyes. John shifted his weight impatiently. Sherlock, for his part, stood still and tried not to shiver from cold.

A few moments later, Doyle returned with a thick garment and an apologetic expression. "I am afraid this is all I could find. It is not the most feminine of garments," he explained reluctantly.

Harry took the heavy cape from him and placed it upon her shoulders. It was far too large for her, and her arms barely stuck out through the arm-holes.

She forced her features into a smile. "I must thank you, my good man," she said awkwardly. "This is most generous of you."

If Doyle noticed Harry's awkwardness, he did not comment upon it. "It is no trouble at all, my dear lady," he assured her. "However, I am afraid I must ask a favour of you in return."

Behind Doyle, John's eyes narrowed. Harry carefully kept her face neutral. "Might I inquire as to the nature of the favour?" she asked pleasantly.

"The truth," Doyle stated simply. Then he elaborated, "I know you have deceived me this very evening, for you told me that you did not go to 221B Baker Street."

"We didn't go there," Sherlock assured him.

"Ah," Doyle said, "but you did. I happen to have various contacts within this city, one of whom goes by the name Alfred Wiggins." John coughed, and Doyle turned to him. "You see now, how I know?"

"Wiggins told you that we met him on Baker Street," Sherlock supplied. "And that we paid him for telling us that the address was unoccupied."

Doyle turned to him. "That is true. A whole guinea's prize, and yet you gentlemen do not look to be particularly rich. But you, sir, you possess a remarkable brain." He stepped closer to Sherlock, eyes narrowing slightly as he stared up at him.

"You have no idea," Sherlock told him.

John coughed to get Doyle's attention. "It seems, good sir, that you have caught us out in a lie. It is true, we visited the address this afternoon. It was empty, as you doubtless know by now."

"So why go back now, under cover of darkness?" Doyle inquired.

"We merely sought to investigate the building further."

"You sought to break in?" Doyle asked loudly.

John glanced behind him, but no one else was on the street. "I beg of you, sir, keep your voice down," he implored Doyle quietly. "Yes, we plan to break in," he admitted. "But we will do so in such a way that nobody will be harmed."

Doyle shook his head. "As a God-fearing citizen, I am afraid that I cannot allow that," he said sadly. "I must inform the proper authorities, now that you have told me of your plans to break the law."

 _Damn_ , John thought. He had hoped they would not need to hurt anybody. He decided to give Doyle one last chance. "I beg you, sir-"

Doyle cut him off. "And yet,  _sir_ , you speak with borrowed words."

John faltered. "Your statement, sir, is…enigmatical."

Doyle's voice seemed to gain confidence as he spoke. "The way you speak, and hold yourself, it is not natural. You are putting on a show; but for whom? Who are you?"

John stared, mouth opening and closing like a fish. Sherlock took the opportunity to jump in. "It's true," he explained, "we are not as we seem. As Harriet told you earlier, we are travellers, from somewhere far away."

"Just where  _are_  you from?" Doyle inquired. "You seem English, you even have the accent. And yet you act as if you are from a foreign country."

A quote popped unbidden into Sherlock's mind.  _The past is another country. They do things differently there._  He never thought he would agree so wholeheartedly with the statement, as he did at that moment.

It was Harry's turn to jump into the conversation, telling Doyle, "If we told you, you would never believe us."

"How do you know that?"

"Okay," she began. "Fine. John and I are the children of a man called the Doctor."

"Doctor who?"

A smile played around Harry's lips for a mere moment. "Just the Doctor." She grew serious. "The Doctor is not of this world, and neither are we. We hail from more than one hundred years in the future, and we came here with our friend," she indicated Sherlock, "to work out if there is a connection between you and him. We think your letter from Doctor Theta Dalek is a code from our father, and are therefore visiting the address in the hopes of finding him. Have I missed anything out, John?"

"No, I think that's everything," John said, staring intently at Doyle's face.

Doyle stared at Harry, then at John, then at Sherlock. Each face told the same story. "You are all mad," the proclaimed. "Absolutely insane!"

"We did warn you," John said. "Well if that's all, we'd best be off then. Cheerio!" And with that he strode off, out of the light from Doyle's house and down the street.

"Thanks for the cape," Harry said with a smile, and touched Doyle's arm lightly before following her brother down the street, the too-large cape flapping almost comically behind her.

Sherlock turned to follow them, but Doyle stopped him with a hand to his arm. "Mr Holmes," he said, looking imploringly up at Sherlock. "Will nobody explain what is happening?"

Sherlock sighed. "I'm sorry," he told Doyle, "but they already have." And then he was gone, hurrying to catch up with the retreating figures of the Watsons.

Doyle watched them go, eyes narrowed as they faded into the distant darkness. Then he squared his shoulders and went back inside, closing the front door and leaning against it, shoulders slumped. He ran a hand over his face with a sigh. The day had made him unsure about many things, but of one thing he was certain – he would never again see his cape.

-o0o-

Sherlock caught up with John and Harry half a block down the road. He slowed down to a walk, trying to regain his breath. "That went well," he commented.

Harry glanced sideways up at him, and gave a small smile of amusement. John kept staring straight ahead. "Why did you tell him everything, Harry?" he asked calmly, ignoring Sherlock.

"He didn't believe any of it," she said, immediately defensive. "It didn't matter."

"Didn't matter?" John's walking pace increased slightly, as did the pitch of his voice. "What if Mr Conan Doyle decides to tell someone about the crazy people walking around London in the dark? What if he calls the police on us for theft? It won't be too hard to find three people with funny clothes and a ridiculous stolen cape!" He paused. "Why did you steal the ridiculous cape, anyway?"

Harry smirked to herself. "Well, brother, I don't know if you've noticed this, but Sherlock is human."

Sherlock, who had been tuning out their bickering, jumped slightly at the sound of his name.

John frowned. "So?"

"And we're not."

"I noticed that." John was becoming irritable.

"And as unobservant as you are, you haven't realised that while we are perfectly warm, your poor friend is shivering like a leaf." Harry turned to Sherlock and took off the cape, reaching up to drape it over his shoulders.

He blinked at her in surprise. "Thank you," he said awkwardly, pulling the cape tighter around himself. It was warming up with his body heat. "You didn't have to do that."

"It's perfectly all right," she smiled.

"Now all you need is a deerstalker," John told him, "and you'll look just like the Sherlock Holmes from the books."

Harry looked at Sherlock again, and laughed. "I didn't realise that it was an Inverness cape," she apologised. "But it's true, if you had a hat and a pipe you would look just like Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock's mildly amused expression turned abruptly serious. "I am Sherlock Holmes," he told her for the umpteenth time.

"You knew what I meant," Harry said, raising an eyebrow at him; but the moment of happiness was gone.

Sherlock turned on his heel and walked quickly in the direction of Baker Street. John raised his eyebrows at Harry to say  _you've done it now_ , and went after his friend. Harry sighed and followed both of them, mentally cursing herself in all the languages she could think of.

-o0o-

Soon after, the time-travelling trio stood in front of 221B Baker Street. The gas street-lamp closest to the front door had gone out, making the tall row of terraced houses seem even more dark and foreboding. The empty, dead windows seemed to silently stare out into the street. Looking up at them, Sherlock felt a shiver run down his spine, despite the warm cape Harry had given him.

After glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, John walked up to the door and leaned his shoulder against it. He pulled out the sonic screwdriver and held it a few inches from the lock, pressing the button to make the tip light up and emit a buzzing sound.

Nothing happened. John frowned and pressed it several times in quick succession, with the pitch of the buzzing going up each time. After a few moments there was a  _crack_  and sparks flew out of the lock, and the door swung open.

John looked disapprovingly at the screwdriver. "Must be a problem with the thermocoupling synthesizer," he muttered, tucking the screwdriver back into his jacket. Glancing up and down the street once more, he went into the almost pitch-black hallway. Sherlock followed him in, and Harry brought up the rear, pulling the door to behind her.

With the door closed, it was impossible to see anything inside the narrow hallway, even with the Time Lords' superior vision. They stood in silence for a few moments, trying to get their bearings with no light to speak of.

John's voice interrupted the darkness. "Anyone got a torch?"

"Were we supposed to bring one?" That was Harry. "I thought that was your job, bringing things."

"I brought the screwdriver!" John replied indignantly.

"Will the screwdriver emit enough light to see anything?" Sherlock, the voice of reason.

A pause, then John sighed. "Might as well try it," he grumbled.

There was a shuffling sound, then the now-familiar buzzing sound could be heard, accompanied by a tiny red light that was barely visible in the pitch black. It did nothing to illuminate its surroundings; if anything, it amplified the crushing darkness that surrounded them completely.

"Maybe not." Sherlock sounded defeated.

"It was worth a try." Harry, trying to console him. There was a faint rustling sound. "All I've got in my pockets is a small kettle, some string, and…what's that…oh! Some celery."

"I would ask why you carry a vegetable around with you," John said, "but I'm afraid of what the answer might be."

"I was more concerned about the kettle," Sherlock remarked dryly.

Harry giggled, a sound soon swallowed up by the enveloping blackness. "What about you, John?"

"All I have is the screwdriver, a TARDIS key, and several candles from the time Sherlock and I had to raid a church."

"It wasn't a real church," Sherlock hastened to point out.

Harry sighed. "So what are we supposedly looking for?"

"Anything that might tell us where Dad is." John paused. "Maybe there will be more light in another room?"

"Could work." Harry was hopeful. "You lead the way."

"Oka-oof!" There was a dull  _thud_ , then John's voice floated through the darkness, significantly higher than usual. "Watch out for the bannister."

"Which bannister?" There was another  _thud_ , this time accompanied by the sound of a consulting detective hitting the floor.

"Sherlock? Are you all right?" Harry sounded concerned.

"I'm good. Mostly."

"You sure?"

A couple of footsteps could be heard, then Harry let out a small shriek. There was a softer  _thud_ , the sound of fabric hitting fabric. Then came a few seconds of silence, before Sherlock's matter-of-fact voice rang out. "Harriet, as comfortable as this position may be, I cannot move unless you get off me."

A choked cough came from John's direction. "What did you say?!" His voice (now back to normal pitch) was a mixture of concern and amusement.

"Sorry!" Harry's panicked, apologetic voice. "Zark. I am so sorry, Sherlock." There was a shuffling sound as she got up and righted herself on the hardwood floor.

"It's perfectly all right." The amusement in Sherlock's voice was audible. "But I'm not sure I want to guess what 'zark' means."

"You shouldn't be teaching him words like that, Harry. Or falling on him."

"Like I said, John, it's all right. While your sister was busy knocking me to the ground, I remembered that this cape has pockets." There was a rustling of thick fabric. "And fortunately, it seems our friend Mr Doyle is quite the resourceful man."

A moment of fumbling in the darkness, then came the unmistakeable sound of a match being struck. A tiny flame sputtered to life, slowly growing in size until dim figures could be made out in the blackness.

"Brilliant," John breathed.

"Good old Doyle," Harry murmured in agreement. "Now, if you use those candles from that church, John, we should be able to see."

"It wasn't a real church," John mumbled, reaching into his pockets and bringing out three long objects. Between them, he and Sherlock managed to light the candles, and they were distributed amongst the time-travelling trio within seconds.

There were several moments of silence as they took in their surroundings as best they could from the dim, flickering light of the candles. The stairs loomed above them on one side, and on the other stood a door which would later lead to Mrs Hudson's flat. Apart from that, the hallway was an empty shell, with no furniture or furnishings to speak of.

John swallowed audibly. "Okay," he said carefully. "I'll take this floor. Sherlock, you take the middle floor, and Harry take the top. Got it?"

Sherlock and Harry nodded in understanding. John turned around slowly, making sure not to blow out the candle, and carefully opened the door to the downstairs flat, disappearing into the darkness. Sherlock glanced apprehensively up the stairs and began to make his way up, Harry close behind.

They paused at the top of the flight of stairs. "What's up there, then?" Harry asked, squinting into the absolute darkness further above them.

"In my time, there's a bedroom that John uses," Sherlock told her. "I'm not sure what it is now."

She nodded bravely. "Right then," she said. "Wish me luck."

"Good luck," he told her.

Harry rolled her eyes. "It's an expression," she muttered, making her way up the stairs.

Sherlock watched from below as the light from her candle was swallowed up by the darkness. Then he turned and silently opened the door, slipping through into the room beyond without making a sound.


	8. Trying to recruit you

Sherlock found himself in a room he recognised as his living room. The curtain-less windows seemed to absorb what little light was in the room, swallowing the effects of the pitiful light from Sherlock's candle when he moved close to them.

The room was completely devoid of furniture, the walls bare and the floorboards rough and broken. Nonetheless, Sherlock carefully moved all around the room, using his candle to peer into every corner. He even stuck his head inside the fireplace, peering up into the chimney in case there was a clue hidden there. He was rewarded for his efforts by a pile of soot falling onto his face.

Sherlock came out of the fireplace coughing, and decided to give up on the living room, moving on to a bedroom which would later become his and John's kitchen. That, too, was empty of both furniture and of clues. There were no windows in the small bedroom, leading him to wonder how people saw in the room before the invention of lights. He suspected that they would have done so with great difficulty, as he was doing now.

Deciding to dismiss the room, Sherlock cautiously entered the dull bathroom, which smelled damp and patches on the walls that felt suspiciously furry. He shuddered and hurried on to what would be his bedroom, which had a window leading onto an alleyway the again swallowed the candle-light.

At first, the room seemed to provide no answers, but as Sherlock was searching he became slowly aware of a low buzzing noise. Frowning, he stopped and concentrated hard for a few moments, finally recognising the sound as that of the sonic screwdriver that John had made. However, it sounded too close to be coming from downstairs where John was. Closing his eyes (not that it made much difference), Sherlock concentrated on locating the source of the buzzing, which he identified as coming from a floorboard under the window pane.

Sherlock ran the couple of steps towards the window, carefully placing the candle on the floor next to him. His fingers scrabbled around on the ground for a few moments, searching for the edges of the floorboard. He gave a small smile when he managed to grasp the edge with his fingernails, and slowly, carefully, he lifted the floorboard, moving the candle to reveal what lay underneath.

He was greeted by the sight of an instrument that he could only guess was a sonic screwdriver. It was similar to the one John had cobbled together earlier, it looked more refined and complete, and the light on the end was blue rather than red. A small piece of duct tape had been fixed over the button to keep the screwdriver turned on, so the tip was lit up and buzzing.

Sherlock analysed the situation. Someone had obviously placed the screwdriver there with the intention that it was found; but why? Was it another clue? How had the mysterious Doctor managed to hide it there? And why was he going to the trouble to set a treasure trail for his children instead of giving them the information directly? The screwdriver raised more questions than it did answers.

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. Sherlock jumped and spun around, raising himself into a half-crouching position. He grabbed the screwdriver for good measure.

A candle appeared around the door, and Harry's face followed, disembodied in the darkness. "Find anything?" she asked cheerfully.

Sherlock's shoulders relaxed, and he stood up, taking his candle with him. "Just this," he said, raising the sonic screwdriver so she could see it.

Harry gasped, and crossed the room in two steps, taking the screwdriver from him and inspecting it. "Where was it?" she breathed.

"Under a floorboard," he explained, pointing downwards to where he had found the clue.

Harry crouched down and felt around, then came up with a frown. "Nothing there," she said. "No note, no address, nothing. Nothing to tell us what to do next. But what the hell happened to you?" she asked, noticing for the first time Sherlock's blackened face.

He rubbed a hand over his soot-covered face. "Oh, I forgot. I had an accident with the chimney," he told her, somewhat sheepishly.

She chuckled and shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "We leave you alone for five minutes, and you end up looking like you're auditioning for  _Mary Poppins_."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, then moved backwards as Harry raised her hand to his face. "It's okay," she reassured him, and he moved back to allow her access to his face. She carefully used her sleeve to wipe at the soot around his eyes and mouth, then moved on to the rest of his face. Sherlock's eyes tracked her hands' progress, but other than that he was motionless.

After a few moments, Harry raised her candle to inspect her handiwork. "You'll pass," she said, "for now. We can get you cleaned up back at the TARDIS. But we need to show John this," she said, holding up the sonic screwdriver.

They both turned towards the door, stopping and jumping slightly when they saw the candlelight in the doorway, illuminating John's form as he leaned against the door frame. "You two all right there?" he asked dryly.

Harry felt guilty, but of what, she was not sure. "Sherlock found this," she said, crossing the room and handing him the still-buzzing screwdriver.

John's whole manner changed. He carefully inspected every inch of the screwdriver by the light of his candle, eyes wide and attentive. Then he slowly raised his face to look at Sherlock. "Where did you find this?" he demanded, brandishing the screwdriver.

"Under a floorboard, by the window," Sherlock told him.

"There's nothing else there," Harry interjected, "I checked."

Carefully, John pulled off the duct tape that covered the screwdriver's button. The buzzing stopped abruptly, and the room was overtaken by the sudden sound of silence.

"Well," John said finally, "I think we should head back to the TARDIS."

-o0o-

When they returned to the alley, a thin grey cat was nosing around the TARDIS, sniffing the base and rubbing up against the corners. When it saw them coming, it disappeared around the corner, its tail swishing out of sight as they reached the blue door.

John unlocked the door and led the way inside. Unnoticed by anyone, the cat slipped inside just as the door swung shut behind Sherlock, hidden from view by the stolen cape.

"So what now?" Sherlock asked as he crossed the metal bridge to the console. "Is there a method of scanning the sonic screwdriver to find your father?" He was surprised at how naturally the words rolled off his tongue.

John was frowning at a readout from the console, so Harry answered for him. "Not unless Dad has managed to put a dormant code somewhere in the software, which wouldn't affect the screwdriver but could give us a message. But that's unlikely, because it would take centuries of-"

John interrupted her mid-sentence. "Did anyone bring a cat in here?"

Sherlock shared a perplexed look with Harry. "A cat?" he inquired.

"Yeah, the TARDIS says there's one lurking somewhere in this room."

As if on cue, a small grey head appeared in one of the coral struts behind John, closely followed by the rest of the cat's body as it jumped fluidly onto a branch. Sherlock noticed the motion, and nodded his head towards the cat. "You mean that one there?"

John jumped and span around, staring wildly at the cat. He advanced upon it slowly, stretching one arm out in front of him. When he reached the cat, he carefully held out one finger and poked it gently in the side. It mewled softly at him, and he jumped backwards.

Sherlock felt a hand on his arm. "That's not…normal behaviour, is it?" Harry asked him quietly.

"Not as far as I can tell," he whispered back, "although to be fair, I am not exactly an expert on normal."

"You're not the only one," she reminded him, before striding over to John and tapping him on the shoulder. "What's up with you?"

He turned to look at her slowly. "The TARDIS let in a cat," he said. "It shouldn't let in anything apart from us."

"It let Sherlock in," she pointed out.

"Oh, he doesn't count," John said dismissively. Then he glanced at Sherlock, and elaborated apologetically. "I mean, the TARDIS didn't recognise his presence, because he was an anomaly. Now she's used to him, she can let him in and out and know there isn't a security breach. But that doesn't explain why she would let in a strange cat."

"The cat was in the alleyway for hours," Sherlock said. "Maybe they got to know each other in that time?" he suggested.

"That would be ridiculous," John told him. "The TARDIS is a machine."

"You said that she was a living matrix inside a machine," Sherlock reminded him. "It seems less ridiculous than some of the things that have occurred today."

"But she can't talk to animals, that's absurd!"

"Nevertheless," Harry interjected, "we should put the cat outside until we've figured out what's going on. There could be a security malfunction of some sort, so it didn't realise the cat was coming in until it was already here. Next time, it could be a dalek."

"All right," John said. He approached the cat again and held out his arms, gently picking it up. He stroked it under the chin while he walked over to the door, and it purred contentedly.

When John reached the door, however, the cat didn't seem to want to go outside. It clung to John's jacket with his coat, resisting being forced back out into the cold night. In the end Harry and Sherlock both had to help extricate John from the cat's grasp, and together they forced the cat out of the TARDIS.

Sherlock tried not to laugh at the situation. Three grown adults, trying to throw a cat out of a blue box. Harry, however, seemed strangely resigned, as if this was a regular occurrence.

John straightened his jacket and cleared his throat, striding back to the console. "Right. Now, we just need to check the whole TARDIS' security system for breaches or anomalies, and scan the entire software of Dad's sonic screwdriver. Piece of cake."

Famous last words.

As soon as John plugged the screwdriver into the computer, Gallifreyan words flashed up in red on the monitor. Sherlock guessed they were error messages from the way John scowled and became impatient. "What does it say?" he inquired.

"It says that the software is unavailable for scanning," John said with a look of irritation. "It's been corrupted somehow. It can be turned on, but it wasn't do anything, even open a door."

"It takes very advanced technology to corrupt a Gallifreyan sonic device," Harry said, frowning. "And there's only two races in the universe who can corrupt the technology like that."

"Let me guess," Sherlock said. "Time Lord and Dalek?"

"Got it in one." John said grimly, unplugging the screwdriver and turning it over in his palm. "Surely Dad would never do that to his screwdriver, it's too valuable to him. That leaves one conclusion."

"The Daleks got to it," Harry finished for him.

"But why would the Daleks leave a series of clues leading to your father's sonic screwdriver?" Sherlock mused. "Unless it was to trap you, of course, but there wasn't anything at 221B."

"Why would Dad leave us a series of clues?" John countered, holding up the screwdriver. "There are outside forces at work here, I'm sure of it." He lobbed the sonic screwdriver carefully over to Sherlock, who caught it easily.

"From what I've seen, it seems as if the Daleks are living beings rather than robots, and advanced ones at that," Sherlock stated. "Would they have the imagination to lave such a trail? Furthermore, would anybody else be able to use Dalek technology without their permission?"

John shook his head, picking up a cloth from the console and chucked it to Sherlock. "You've still got soot on your face," he told him. "The Daleks aren't at all lacking in the imagination department. And Dalek ships are notoriously difficult to crack. In school, we learned that there are three things in the Universe you shouldn't try to do, and number one was hacking a Dalek ship."

"What were the others?" Sherlock asked, wiping his face carefully.

"The second thing you shouldn't do is tell anybody what the third thing is," John said with a grin.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows, and was about to fire back a retort when Harry suddenly spoke up. "Could it have been Doyle?"

John blinked and looked at his sister. "Could what have been Doyle? The treasure trail?"

She nodded. "If I remember correctly from last time I met him, he was a good actor, or at least a good liar. He could have been pretending not to know anything. I mean, he had Wiggins out keeping an eye on us."

John frowned, and Sherlock pursed his lips in thought. "That could be true," John admitted, "but if so, why send us to the screwdriver? Would he be in cahoots with the Daleks?"

"Or with your father," Sherlock muttered, but neither Time Lord heard him.

"That would make sense," Harry was saying excitedly. "They could have engineered things so that the Sherlock Holmes books never existed. But the world needed a Sherlock Holmes, so one was created." She gestured towards Sherlock.

"And they kidnapped Dad," John continued, "and hid him somewhere on their ship, in the hope that we would go and save him!"

"There were no signs of life on the ship when you scanned it," Sherlock reminded him, placing the cloth he was holding back on the console.

"I've been thinking about that. There were no signs of life showing, yet there were Daleks on the ship as well. The detection software was definitely not faulty, so the Daleks must have created a room or something which wasn't detectable by their software. They tripped their own software, the bastards."

"The Dalek that Harry killed didn't know where your father was," Sherlock pointed out. "It said his last known location was the destruction of some cult."

"The Cult of Skaro," Harry confirmed. "But the thing about Daleks, Sherlock, is that they have no emotions apart from hatred. They are lying, scheming, balls of pure evil, and that's on a good day. There is no such thing as a good Dalek, or even an honest Dalek. If one was threatened, it would rather die than be honest."

"You believed it," Sherlock stated.

"We were confused and scared!" John said. "Look, why are you so disbelieving? This theory makes complete sense!"

"Except," Sherlock said, "for why the Daleks would go to the trouble to erase a fictional character just to get their enemies to find a screwdriver, which would tell them that their father had been captured! Wouldn't it be simpler just to kill you and be done with it?"

"Like John said, the Daleks are not lacking in imagination," Harry pointed out. "If they wanted to kill us, which they do, they would prefer to make us run into their trap and  _then_  kill us."

"So your father may be dead already," Sherlock retorted, slipping his hand into his pocket.

"True," John admitted. "But there's a possibility he's still alive, don't you see? We have to take this chance, no matter how slim it is."

"You're walking into what may well be a trap," Sherlock said, "on the off-chance that you can save your father without being killed yourselves, all before analysing the situation and looking at all the facts."

"What other facts are there to look at?" John demanded.

Harry walked over to Sherlock, noticeably calmer than her brother. He turned to her, and she placed a serious hand on his shoulder. "It's okay if you don't want to do this, Sherlock," she told him solemnly. "We can use the TARDIS to take you home right now. You can forget all of this: time travel, space, everything. No Daleks, no kamikaze rescue missions. Just Earth and detective cases and normalcy. Nobody will think any worse of you for choosing that option."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at her, a movement so slight it was almost unnoticeable. "Are you trying to put me off?"

"God, no," John said from behind Sherlock. He turned, and John offered him a crooked half-smile. "Trying to recruit you."


	9. Separate Ideas

The year was 1963, and the month was November. A lone, wrecked Dalek ship sat upon the moon of the planet that was designated Sol III, and known also as Earth.

Inside, the ship appeared deserted. Amidst the gleaming, polished surfaces, a blue wooden box began to slowly materialise, until it was standing in the middle of the round control room, the battered walls and sharp edges looking out-of-place.

The door swung open with a  _creak_  that echoed off the metallic walls. John poked his head out, looking around carefully before stepping out into the ship. One hand was in his pocket, firmly gripping his hand-made sonic screwdriver.

A moment passed, then Harry hopped out also, glancing around before going to stand beside her brother. She had no weapon, not even a screwdriver, but her stance was aggressive, as if daring anything to appear out of nowhere and attack them. "Are you sure we shouldn't bring a gun?" she asked. "It would be good security."

"No guns," John told her firmly. "Dad never uses guns, and neither will we."

"You never had a problem with them before," Harry muttered. Then she frowned and peered back into the TARDIS. "Are you coming, Sherlock?" she called through the half-open door.

"Just a moment," came the reply, floating from within. They heard footsteps clattering over the metal grating inside, and soon Harry could see Sherlock's silhouette coming towards them.

Just before he reached the doorway, however, the door swung shut unexpectedly. A locking sound could be heard, trapping Sherlock inside.

John and Harry exchanged a confused, panicked glance, then rushed towards the TARDIS as one. Harry tugged at the handle, to no avail. John pulled out his sonic screwdriver and tried opening the door with that, but again, nothing happened, to his consternation. "It must be deadlocked," he said with a frown. Then he hammered on the door. "Sherlock? Can you hear me?"

A tense moment passed, then came Sherlock's reply. "Just barely. What happened?"

John's shoulders relaxed slightly. "I don't know what happened," he explained. "We can't get in. Can you get out?"

The door rattled for a moment, then Sherlock said, "Negative. Do you have a key?"

"A key!" Harry said. She rummaged in her pocket for a moment before triumphantly holding up a small silver key, fitting it into the lock and turning it. Or rather, trying to turn it. "It's stuck!"

"Stuck?" John demanded. "How can it be stuck?" He gently pushed her out of the way, taking matters into his own hands. "TARDIS keys don't just get…what the hell?" He frowned, removing the key and staring at it.

"What's happening?" Sherlock asked from inside.

"Nothing," Harry called back. "We can't open the door at all. Even the key isn't working, which should be impossible, by all the laws of physics."

There was a pause. "What can we do?" Sherlock asked after a moment.

Harry raised an eyebrow at John, who sighed. "There's nothing we can do, Sherlock," he said apologetically. "Something's blocking the door of the TARDIS, so nothing can get in or out. This is advanced technology."

"Probably Dalek technology," Harry chipped in. "Only they could do something this strong to our technology."

"Great," Sherlock said, the irritation in his voice almost palpable. "I'm caught up in a battle of technologies."

"Sherlock," John said seriously, "I am so, so sorry that you have to be in this situation. Maybe you should have just gone home."

"And let you get killed somewhere in space?" Sherlock asked incredulously. "Please, John. I might not be much use right now, but I will help you, I promise. I'll find a way. You go on."

John gave a small smile in spite of the situation. "Alright, Sherlock."

"Are you sure?" Harry sounded unconvinced.

"I'll be fine," Sherlock said reassuringly. "You go ahead. I'll catch up."

Harry pursed her lips. "Fine," she said eventually. "Don't you go anywhere," she warned him.

"I'll try and remember that," he said, his smile audible in his voice.

"Bye, mate," John said. "We'll be back as soon as we can."  _If we get out of this alive_ , he thought but did not say out loud.

"Goodbye, John," Sherlock said. "Hurry up, before the Daleks are all gone."

John turned and walked away regretfully. Harry followed him after a moment. "Are you sure he'll be okay?" she asked when they were out of earshot of the TARDIS.

"What could happen to him?" John said. "Nothing can get in or out. The TARDIS won't let anything hurt him in there. He'll be fine." His voice was a lot more confident than he felt.

The Time Lords strode on together, out of the control room, entering the maze corridors upon the Dalek ship, each step taking them further away from their friend. They knew what they needed to do.

Inside the TARDIS, Sherlock's smile disappeared. He turned off the sonic screwdriver that John had given him earlier, stepping away from the door which he had secretly been keeping closed during his conversation with John and Harry. Tucking the screwdriver inside his stolen cape, he turned and walked towards the console, his face set in stone. He knew what he needed to do.

-o0o-

John and Harry strode through the unfamiliar corridors of the Dalek ship. He walked slightly ahead of her, taking charge in this mission as he would in any mission.

The ship was eerily quiet, the only sound to be heard being their footsteps. The rubber soles of Harry's combat boots squeaked as they rounded a corner, and both jumped slightly before they caught themselves.

John led the way down a ramp to another level of the ship. He chuckled internally, remembering the time before the Daleks had anti-gravity plates, and had to roll around everywhere. He guessed that the ramps were a throwback from that era.

They walked around a few more corners before Harry broke the silence. "What exactly are we looking for?"

"Some sort of a hidden room," John explained. "Hidden how, I'm not sure."

"It could be out of step with the rest of time," Harry suggested. "They'd only need to put it a second out of sync with the rest of the universe, and it'd be virtually undetectable."

John stopped abruptly in his tracks, and turned to stare at her. "Of course," he breathed. "That's brilliant! Why didn't I think of that?"

"Like I said earlier," she replied nonchalantly, "you need me." And with that she winked and started walking again, taking the lead.

John frowned and hurried to catch up with her. "But if it's out of sync with everything else," he said, "how the hell are we going to find it? It'd be virtually undetectable."

Harry frowned and slowed down, allowing him to walk alongside her. Eventually her face cleared. "The scanner," she said. "If the Dalek scanner won't detect any life forms in the room, it won't detect the room either. So we go back and scan it again…"

"…and look for the missing piece of the ship!" John finished for her. "Of course! You are brilliant, did I mention?"

"I am good," she admitted with a grin.

John turned around and started walking back the other direction. "Let's go!"

"Allons-y!" she agreed, and ran back up the ramp after him.

-o0o-

The TARDIS control room was quiet, the time rotor sitting still upon the console. The whole room seemed to be emitting a low-pitched humming sound, barely noticeable, just in the background. Sherlock approached the centre of the room slowly, his footsteps on the metal grating disrupting the silence.

He stopped by the console, looking up at the time rotor. He cleared his throat. "Um, hello," he began. "Harry told me that you are alive, so with any luck you can hear me now, and I'm not talking to a machine for no reason.

"Thank you, by the way," he said. He held up the sonic screwdriver. "I assume it was you who kept the door closed for me? I'd imagine I wouldn't be able to do it by myself, even with this." He placed the screwdriver carefully on the console. "I am just a human, after all. John and Harry are Time Lords, but you kept them out for me. Why?"

Sherlock walked around the console, and stopped next to the lever which John had earlier pulled to send them into flight. He leaned against the console and stared up towards the time rotor, aware that he had subconsciously pinpointed the time rotor as being the TARDIS's consciousness. He felt the console vibrating lightly under his palms. "Is it because I'm right?" he asked. "I am, aren't I? The Daleks haven't taken the Doctor, have they?"

The TARDIS couldn't reply, but it felt to Sherlock as if the ambient humming sound increased in volume, just for a moment. "And if the Daleks didn't take the Doctor," he continued confidently, "it wasn't them that corrupted the screwdriver. It was him. He corrupted his own screwdriver so that his own children wouldn't find him. When John plugged it in, you could tell that, couldn't you? Two pieces of Time Lord technology would surely be compatible with each other. But why didn't you tell them?"

A light on the console flashed red, a clear warning. "Are you telling me not to go through that line of questioning?" he asked, and the light stopped flashing. "All right," he said, trying not to think how crazy it was that he was taking advice from a machine. "If not that, then what?"

Sherlock glanced around, lips pursed in thought, until his gaze fell upon the door. His eyes widened. "The cat!" he said. "You let a cat in, but why? Maybe you wanted it in out of the cold, sure, but there's something else. Were you trying to give John and Harry a clue?" The humming became louder again, then quietened.

"Or were you trying to give me a clue?" he mused. "Either way, I think I need to go back to London. John and Harry won't believe me. I need to prove it to them, before it's too late for them. Before they do something stupid."

Sherlock took a breath and looked straight at the time rotor. "Please," he said. "I need to help them, but I don't know how to fly a time machine. Can you take me back to the alley we were in?"

A light on the console flashed green, and the console began to beep and move about, buttons pressing themselves and levers flicking up and down. Above him, the time rotor began to move steadily up and down in a rhythmic motion, and the  _vworp, vworp_  sound of the engines began, steadily becoming louder.

Sherlock watched as the TARDIS began to fly itself, and a small smile appeared on his face, slowly growing as he watched dials turning, seemingly by an invisible hand. He watched as a small readout appeared on the monitor, with symbols that he recognised as numbers from observing the sphygmomanometer earlier. The numbers began to steadily count down, until they stopped at a date in the late 19th century.

The time rotor slowed down and stopped, and the console beeped once, before becoming silent once more. The door swung open, showing the dark alley outside.

"Thank you," Sherlock said sincerely. He picked up the sonic screwdriver from the console and walked towards the door. He turned once to smile in the direction of the time rotor, before turning and stepping out into the cold depths of old London town. The door squeaked shut behind him.

-o0o-

In 1963, John and Harry were jogging towards the control room of the Dalek ship when they heard a noise that sounded horribly familiar. They exchanged a glance, then as one they broke into a sprint, dashing towards the source of the sound.

A pit settled in John's stomach as he ran. Part of him hoped that his ears were somehow wrong, that he had made a terrible mistake. But underneath, he knew that he wasn't wrong, that he could hear what he thought he could hear.

His fears were confirmed when he entered the control room at breakneck speed, skidding to a stop on the polished floors. Harry did likewise, staring aghast at the spot where they had left the TARDIS. They could do nothing but watch as the familiar blue box finished disappearing, the sound of the engines fading to nothing.

Harry looked at John in consternation. "They're gone," she said faintly. "Sherlock and the TARDIS, they're gone?"

John slowly walked forwards, to the spot where the TARDIS had stood only a moment earlier. He reached out one hand and waved it through the air, finding nothing. "They're gone," he confirmed grimly. "Someone's taken them."

"The Daleks," Harry stated. "Must have been. They made Sherlock real, trapped him, and now they've taken him to Rassilon knows where." Her nose was wrinkling in disgust at the thought of the Daleks' apparent actions.

John closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them again and turned to his sister. "Well," he said determinedly, "soon it won't just be Rassilon who knows where they've taken him." He strode towards the ship's controls and began working furiously, pressing buttons and inspecting readouts. "Because," he explained over his shoulder while he worked, "the Daleks have made a mistake. A big mistake, which they  _will_  regret."

Harry came up behind him and began to help, scanning the many screens around the walls. "What mistake?"

"They've taken someone I care about," John said grimly. "Nobody in this universe takes somebody I care about, and gets away with it. Nobody."

-o0o-

Sherlock stepped out of the TARDIS and looked about himself. It was still night-time, and the darkness made it difficult to see, although the light spilling from the open door of the TARDIS offered some illumination of the scene. His eyes darted around the small alley, inspecting all of the cracks and corners. The cat was nowhere to be seen.

He walked up and down the alley once, but the feline could not be found. Rolling his eyes in irritation, Sherlock walked back over to the TARDIS and pulled the door handle. It did not open.

He frowned and tried again, but the door would not budge. He stepped back and looked right at the TARDIS. "What is it?" he asked. "What do you want me to do? This is more than a century before my time, I don't know anywhere to go. The only place we've been is 221B Baker Street, and that was thoroughly searched. There was nothing there."

There was no reaction from the blue box, although in all honesty, Sherlock didn't know what he had been hoping for. He sighed deeply. "All right. If you won't let me in, you want me to go somewhere else, correct? But where?" He pursed his lips, and noticed that the stolen cape he was wearing had begun to slip down his shoulder. He absent-mindedly pulled it up, then froze with his hand in mid-air. He looked down at the cape, then back up at the TARDIS.

"Of course," Sherlock breathed. "You want me to go back and see Arthur Conan Doyle. Although I think we somewhat burned our bridges on that front," he said with a frown.

The TARDIS remained still and silent. "All right, fine," Sherlock said. "I'll go and see Conan Doyle. Again." He stuffed his hands in his pockets and began to walk down the alley, when a thought occurred to him.

Sherlock wheeled around and walked back. "You stay here until I'm back," he said warningly to the TARDIS, suppressing the urge to waggle his finger at it. "Do not disappear on me."

The TARDIS stood silently, unmoving. Sherlock carefully turned his back and walked away, craning his head around at the end of the alley to make sure the TARDIS was still there. It was.

He continued walking down the street, keeping an ear out for the unmistakeable sound of the TARDIS engines, which thankfully did not come. Sherlock squared his shoulders against the chilly night, and strode towards where he remembered meeting Arthur Conan Doyle earlier.

It took Sherlock several attempts to find the correct street. He strode up and down darkened streets irritatedly, pausing once to duck into an alleyway to avoid a passing policeman. He knew that his failure to remember where they had been could easily be put down to the different layout of the streets that had once been familiar to him (a lot can change in a century), but he was still irritated at himself.

His brain was normally the one thing Sherlock could rely on, and it was letting him down in the one time he needed it – to help his friends, before they did something stupid. Sure, he had a time machine, but from what Harry had told him it wasn't always accurate. He needed to hurry.

Finally, after nearly an hour of searching, Sherlock arrived back at the residence of Arthur Conan Doyle. He knew it was late, or even early morning by now, but that didn't stop him from nearly hammering the door down to get Doyle's attention.

Eventually, there was the distant sound of footsteps on a staircase, and a light of some sort turned on in the hallway. The lock clicked, and the door opened slowly, revealing a bleary-eyed Doyle wearing a deep red dressing-gown. A red-and-white striped nightcap sat askew upon his head.

He squinted in Sherlock's direction for a moment, his shoulders slumping when he recognised him. "Mr Holmes," he said curtly. "To what do I owe the  _pleasure_  of this late-night visit?" The tone of his voice indicated it was anything but.

Sherlock did not bother to reply, instead pushing past Doyle into the dimly-lit hallway. "I see you are now in possession of my cape," Doyle muttered, closing the door without locking it. He sighed. "What do you want, Mr Holmes?" he demanded. "Have you and your friends not disrupted my night enough? Speaking of which, where are your friends?"

"They're in trouble," Sherlock told him, shrugging off the stolen cape and handing it to Doyle. "Big trouble."

"What a shame," Doyle said sarcastically, taking his cape and hanging it back on its hook. "Now, was that the sole reason for your visit, or do you have some more good news for me?"

Sherlock gritted his teeth. He was finally understanding how Doyle could have created him – the author seemed every bit as annoying as Sherlock knew he himself could be. "Look," he said, "I'm not happy about this either. But I need your help."

Doyle raised his eyebrows. "I beg your pardon?"

"I wouldn't ask you if I didn't have to," Sherlock assured him. "But my friends could die, and I think you're the only person who could help them. Please."

Doyle's eyebrows disappeared into his tousled hairline. "I beg your pardon?" he repeated. "You and your friends come to both my commercial and personal premises, hassle me, tell me absurd lies about who you are, steal my cape," he gestured towards the hooks beside him, his voice rising, "and you stand there in front of me, at this godforsaken hour, and presume to demand my help to 'save' them?" He was almost shouting at Sherlock now, who had the decency to look sheepish. "Well,  _sir_ , I can tell you right now that the answer is most emphatically no."

Sherlock winced and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I am sorry about your cape," he said. "But to be fair, my friends and I only visited you once before now. The second time, you chose to speak to us."

Doyle dismissed it with a wave of his hand. "Irrelevant."

"And," Sherlock said with some apprehension, "they weren't lies. What John and Harry – Harriet, sorry – what they told you, they weren't lies."

Another wave. "Impossible."

"Two days ago, I would have said the same thing," Sherlock told him. "Time travel, aliens – it all seems impossible. I know. But if you think about it-"

"I have a good mind to call a policeman," Doyle cut him off. "I suggest you leave now, Mr Holmes." He opened the door again and motioned for Sherlock to leave.

Sherlock stayed put. "Five minutes," he said. "Please. Just give me five minutes to talk, and when I'm done, you can call a policeman if you want to. I'll go quietly. But please, afford me five minutes."

Doyle squinted at him for a moment, considering. Then he heaved a deep sigh and closed the front door. "I am certain that I will regret this," he said, "but you may have five minutes to speak. Then you will leave immediately. Do you understand?"

Sherlock nodded, relieved. "I understand," he said.

"Very well." Doyle led the way through to his comfortably-furnished living room.

The large brick fireplace dominated the room, flanked by two overstuffed armchairs. The fire within had long since died down, but the heat remained, leaving the room comfortably warm. Doyle sat down in one such armchair, and motioned for Sherlock to do the same in the other. He steepled his hands under his chin and looked at Sherlock, waiting for him to begin speaking.

Sherlock mimicked Doyle's pose, and closed his eyes for a moment, trying to work out how to compress all of the previous few days into five minutes' worth of talking, even into an overview. After a few moments, Sherlock opened his eyes and looked at Doyle's faintly disbelieving expression. He opened his mouth and began to speak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this chapter was getting too long, so had to be split in half. To be continued...


	10. A kamikaze mission

On board the Dalek ship, John was scrolling through a long list of various readouts from around the ship on a screen by the door, scanning each entry with his lightning-fast Time Lord's eyes. Across the room, Harry was squinting at a schematic of the ship which she had pulled up on another screen, zooming in and out of different sections.

After a while, Harry gave a shout and jabbed a finger at her screen. "Aha!"

John turned his head slightly, still scanning the list. "What have you found?"

She pressed a couple of buttons, and the ship's schematic appeared in front of her, a three-dimensional green hologram. "Come and look at this a sec."

He sighed and abandoned his multitudinous readouts, crossing the room in two strides. Harry turned to him and pinched the sides of the hologram with her fingers, enlarging it to get to the section she wanted. "There," she said, pointing.

John looked at it, then up at his sister. He looked back at where she was pointing to. "I see nothing of importance," he said slowly.

"Look," she insisted, still indicating the hologram with a finger.

"You're pointing at a doorway," he told her. "When was the last time you slept?"

Harry rolled her eyes. "I'm fine," she said. "Look at this door. There's a room behind it, but the room isn't connected to the door."

John frowned, and took another look at where the door met the room behind. Sure enough, the room in question ended in a wall on the side of the door, which seemed to lead to…well, to nowhere. The room, which seemed to be a storage space for spare armour parts, had a door on the other side which was connected to the room.

A smile slowly grew on his face, and he looked up at Harry. "Bingo," he said quietly. "Well done, Harry. I think you've found Dad."

Harry grinned at him, then glanced around at where the TARDIS had stood before it disappeared. Her smile faded. "I know we're going to go in there unarmed, and be all noble and everything…but I would feel a lot more confident with a gun over my shoulder," she confessed.

John stepped through the hologram towards his sister and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Are you sure you can do this?" he asked. "There's no Daleks on the ship, or not where they can get to you here. If you want, you could stay here…"

Harry swallowed and shook her head. She snorted at him. "You're not getting rid of me that easily, Johnny," she told him. "We're doing this together."

John's shoulders relaxed, and he stepped back. "Good," he said. "I mean, I would have done it, but I'm glad you-"

Harry rolled her eyes. "Shut up," she told him good-naturedly. "You need me, we both know that."

He nodded. "Don't I know it," he muttered.

She pressed some buttons, and the hologram disappeared. "Come on," she said. "Let's go kick some Dalek-"

-o0o-

"As fantastical as your claims are, Mr Holmes," Doyle conceded, "I must confess that there seems to be some sense in them. Perhaps you and your friends were being truthful after all."

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. "Well," he commented, "that was easier than I thought it would be."

"I am still not entirely convinced," Doyle added. "You have not yet shown me any proof, other than words and logic."

"What sort of proof do you want?" Sherlock asked, glancing at his watch. He had one minute left to convince Doyle that he was telling the truth. "I do not have anything from the 21st century…" He trailed off and looked at his watch, before quickly slipping it off and handing it to Doyle. "How about this?" he asked. "A digital wristwatch, purchased more than a century in the future."

Doyle took the watch and looked it over, his eyes slowly widening. "What is this magic?" he breathed, looking incredulously at the digital numbers. He inadvertently pressed a button, and jumped when the whole display lit up.

"It's the time," Sherlock explained, "shown in the military form. I presume you are familiar with twenty-four hour time?"

Doyle nodded numbly. He could do nothing but stare at the object in front of him. "But how is this possible?" he asked Sherlock.

"Technology will progress a long way in a very short space of time," Sherlock told him. "I'm afraid that a lot of it will be after your time, though."

Doyle eventually tore himself away from Sherlock's watch and handed it back to him, apparently satisfied that it was real. He steepled his hands under his chin again, in the position that was so familiar to Sherlock. "You said that you needed help?"

Sherlock smiled in relief, slipping the watch back onto his wrist and leaning forwards. "It's my friends who need help," he explained. "They are trying to find their father, but I am concerned that they may be entering a trap."

Doyle frowned. "However would I be able to help you?" he asked. "I know virtually nothing of your friends, or of their father."

"The letter," Sherlock explained, "that you received from Doctor Dalek. My friends believe that it was a coded note from their enemies, the Daleks. But I believe that it was a message from their father."

"You believe that this Doctor has sent them to find him?" Doyle inquired. "Why would he not just find them instead?"

Sherlock bit his lip. "I'm still working on that part," he admitted. "I suspect that time travel may play some part in the proceedings, but exactly how, I don't know. And I really don't like not knowing."

Doyle stood up with conviction. "Well, Mr Holmes. I must confess that I never thought I would say this, but I believe that you are telling the truth. I believe that you are from a different time, a different place, and that I was supposed to write a book about you."

Sherlock gave a genuine smile for the first time since he had entered the house. "I am glad to hear that," he told the author. "Does that mean you will help my friends?"

Doyle pursed his lips. "Your friends have not proven themselves to be entirely trustworthy," he said. "You, however, have. I will therefore assist you in finding the absent Doctor; but please know that it is not for them, Mr Holmes, but for you."

Sherlock glanced downwards and swallowed. He was not used to anyone declaring loyalty to him (other than John, of course, but he had recently revealed that he had another motivation for his actions). "All right," he said eventually, looking up at Doyle. "If you'll let me, I can take you to the TARDIS. It's a doorway," he explained before Doyle could ask for clarification, "to another dimension. The doorway can move through time and space, thus allowing someone within the dimension to go wherever and whenever they choose."

"Astounding," Doyle said. "And this doorway, it is currently in London?"

"That's how I got here," Sherlock confirmed. "It's hidden in an alley, several streets away from here. I could take you to see it, if you would like."

"At this hour?" Doyle seemed nervous for the first time. "Are you sure we will be safe, sir?"

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I promise you, we will be perfectly safe."

Doyle closed his eyes and took a breath. Then he opened them and nodded resolutely. "This is madness," he said, "but I will go with you, Mr Holmes."

 _About time_ , Sherlock thought but did not say. "We can leave whenever you're ready."

Doyle stood up with zeal. "Let us go now!" he exclaimed, striding towards the door.

Sherlock coughed. "Mr Doyle?"

He turned around irritatedly, one hand on the door handle. "What is it?"

Sherlock nodded towards Doyle's attire. "Would it not be…prudent to perhaps get dressed first?"

Doyle glanced down at his dressing gown. "Oh," he said. "Perhaps you are right." He exited the room quickly, and Sherlock heard hurried footsteps going up the stairs. He rolled his eyes, and headed towards the door himself, to wait for Doyle in the hallway.

-o0o-

"Hold up a minute," Harry said, holding up a hand and stopping.

John halted next to her. "What is it?"

"I'm sure we've been through here before," she frowned. "I remember the scorch marks on this door." She indicated the door on her left, where there were indeed faded scorch marks, unrepaired from some long-ago battle.

John sighed. "I had feared as much," he admitted, beginning to walk again. "Do you have any idea where the hell we're supposed to go from here?"

"If I knew," Harry said irritably, turning a corner, "we would be there by now. Besides, you're the one who's supposed to be in charge."

"You're the one who was looking at the map!"

"All right, all right," Harry said. "So we're lost. We're looking for a door that doesn't fit with the rest of the ship. Shouldn't be too hard to find, right?"

"Right," John said resignedly. "Let's go."

They continued walking, this time with more determination. Harry took the left side, and John took the right as they walked down various corridors and around countless corners together.

"They all look the same," Harry said eventually. "The doors are all exactly identical."

John nodded in agreement. "All round, gold, shiny, polished, perfect…where are you going?" He stopped and turned around, watching his sister turn tail and run back the way they had come. He sprinted towards her, and caught up easily. "Where are you going?" he repeated.

"The door," Harry said breathlessly. "The one we passed three times. I noticed it because it was different, it had that scorch mark."

"So there was a fight," John said. "So what? And can we slow down?"

She slowed to a jog. "The whole bottom of the door was scorched," she explained quickly, "but nothing around it was. The floor, the walls around it, were fine. And none of the other doors were like that."

"Of course," John breathed, remembering. It seemed so stupidly simple. "How could we have not seen it before?"

"No idea," Harry said. "Maybe there was a perception filter, or maybe we're just thick." She quickened her pace again, and John followed, so they were both sprinting towards the door that did not fit with the rest of the ship.

They found the door in a matter of minutes, and both Time Lords came to an abrupt stop, taking a moment to catch their breath.

The siblings locked eyes for a moment, and smiled sadly at each other. Neither knew what they would find on the other side of the door, but both were almost certain they would not survive whatever lay in store for them.

John glanced downwards and clicked off the safety on his gun. "You ready?" he asked Harry, one hand hovering over the door handle.

Harry raised her gun, aiming it at the door, and nodded once. "Let's go."

John took a deep breath and pushed the button beside the door, running through as the door opened before him. Harry followed him, gun at the ready. The door rolled shut behind them, closing with a firm  _click_.

-o0o-

It took longer than Sherlock expected for Doyle to get dressed, especially considering how eager he had been to leave before. But soon enough he appeared on the stairs, hurrying down and jumping from the third-to-last step to the floor. He crossed to the coat hooks behind the front door, picking up the thick cape which Sherlock had returned to him earlier, along with a warm overcoat.

After a moment's pause, Doyle held the cape out to Sherlock. He raised his eyebrows at Doyle, who kept his hand outstretched, indicating that Sherlock should take the cape.

He slowly reached out and took the cape. Doyle averted his eyes and pulled on the overcoat, clearing his throat. "Well," he said gruffly. "We should go." He pulled open the front door and stepped out, turning right and hurrying off.

Sherlock stepped out also. "Wrong way," he called, setting off to the left.

A few moments later, Sherlock heard footsteps hurrying up behind him, and Doyle appeared at his side. "I was testing you," he muttered, stuffing his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat.

A smile tugged at the corner of Sherlock's mouth. "I'm sure you were."

They arrived back in the alleyway where Sherlock had left the TARDIS, to find that there was nothing there. Sherlock blinked, and turned his head around and back again. He squinted, but the TARDIS remained conspicuous in its absence.

He cursed mentally, and turned around to look at Doyle. The author was watching Sherlock with folded arms, tapping one foot, with an unimpressed look on his face. "Well, Mr Holmes," he said curtly. "This is a very interesting  _door_ , I must say."

"It was here before," Sherlock tried to explain.

"And now it isn't." Doyle turned to leave.

"Wait." Sherlock held up a hand. "Please. Just…two minutes."

Doyle stopped in his tracks. He sighed. "Very well," he said, turning back around and standing by the entrance to the alley, pulling his coat around himself more tightly.

Sherlock frowned, closing his eyes and pressing his fingers to his temples. The TARDIS had definitely been there before, right in front of where he now stood. Now, however, there was plainly nothing there, despite him having told the TARDIS not to move.

He opened his eyes and moved closer to where the TARDIS had been before he had left. His eyes darted around the alleyway, looking for a clue, any clue, as to where the time machine might have gone.

Absent-mindedly, Sherlock noticed that the cat from earlier was nosing around the alley, sniffing at something on the ground. It wasn't until the cat turned on a right angle that he realised that something was wrong.

Sherlock cautiously walked towards the cat, one hand outstretched at chest height. Tentatively, he moved forwards, until the tips of his fingers met a solid surface.

Sherlock flattened his hand against the cool, hard surface, marvelling at the fact that it was completely invisible. There were no distortions, no warped image on the other side, nothing to indicate that the TARDIS was in fact standing in front of him.

Sherlock began to move his hand, feeling his way over the invisible panels until he found the door handle. He curled his fingers around and handle and pulled firmly, watching as a gap seemingly appeared in the air before him, warm light spilling out into the dark alleyway. He heard a gasp from behind him, and a smile once again tugged at his mouth.

Doyle came up behind Sherlock, peering through the doorway in wonder. "After you," Sherlock said, giving a small bow and ushering Doyle inside the TARDIS.

Doyle stepped through into the bright interior of the TARDIS, mouth agape. He stared all around him, from the metal grate on the floor to the very top of the time rotor. He turned and went out again, looking around at the dark alley; then went back inside, jumping slightly at the jolting sensation as he crossed the threshold. "What was that queer sensation?" he asked Sherlock.

Sherlock followed him into the TARDIS and closed the door behind them, plunging the alley outside into darkness once again. "I believe that's caused by crossing dimensions," Sherlock said, striding to the console. "Thank you," he said to the TARDIS, before turning back to Doyle, who was staring at the console in wonder. "Do you believe me now?"

He tore his gaze away from the console to stare at Sherlock. "This is like nothing I have ever seen or imagined," he breathed. "If I am not dreaming, then of course, I believe you, Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock smiled his smile which had become something of a trademark. "Excellent," he said.

"However," Doyle added, "I do not know what I could possibly do to help your friends. This…this technology is like nothing I have ever seen." He wandered over to the console and gently placed his hands on the edge, feeling the distant thrumming of the engines. He looked up at Sherlock beside him. "I must confess myself to be lost, Mr Holmes. This environment, while amazing, is completely unfamiliar, and your circumstances are like nothing I could have imagined. I never even thought time travel to be possible, and now you want me to help you to save two friends who are not even of this planet. I would love to help, Mr Holmes, honestly I would. But I fear I would have no idea of what to do."

Sherlock shook his head. "I have no idea, either," he admitted. "I am every bit as lost as you. All I know is that John and Harry are heading into a dangerous situation without thinking it through. My brain is great, or so I am often told. But as it was you who created me, so to speak, your mind must surely be every bit as good as mine, if not better."

Doyle noticed that Sherlock did not seem particularly pleased about this idea. "Very well," he said. "I will attempt to help you, but I cannot promise that we will get a result."

Sherlock's shoulders relaxed slightly. "Thank you," he said.

Doyle held up a finger. "On the condition," he said, "that you bring me back here when we are done. And to this year, if you please."

"You are standing," Sherlock told him, "in the best time machine in the universe. I could bring you back to five minutes after now, or five minutes before we arrived here. You will get back."

"Unless we are both killed by these Daleks," Doyle pointed out.

Sherlock frowned. "I wasn't going to say that."

"But you thought it."

"You know me too well."

"Of course I do," Doyle said, rather too smugly in Sherlock's opinion. "I created you."

Sherlock ignored him, walking around the console to where he had stood when talking to the TARDIS before. He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Um. Hello," he said, directing his words up to the time rotor. "Again. You let me in this time. Does that mean I was supposed to bring Mr Doyle here? I presume you're invisible for his benefit?"

There was no response from the large console. Sherlock tried again. "But what now? You have us here, Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle. Surely that would cause a paradox in some universe."

A light on the console suddenly flashed bright green. Doyle jumped, but Sherlock barely glanced down before looking up again, a small smile forming on his lips. "I said something right," he mused.

"Paradox, perhaps?" Doyle suggested. Sherlock's looked towards him, and indeed the whole attention of the room seemed to shift towards the would-be author. "I mean," he continued, "that time travel must be complicated, however it works. Contradictions must surely arise on occasion. Might these be the paradoxes to which the TARDIS is referring?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Doyle saw the light on the console flash red. "Oh," he said. "Apparently not."

"Was it when I said universe?" Sherlock asked, and the attention of the room shifted back to him. "Are there multiple universes involved here?"

"Are there multiple universes at all?" Doyle inquired.

"I have no idea," Sherlock confessed. "It was a flippant remark, that's all. I didn't think it would mean anything."

On the console, the green light flashed twice. "Apparently your flippant remark is significant," Doyle observed.

"Different universes," Sherlock mused. "Are you familiar with the multiverse theory?"

"I cannot say I am, no. Would you care to explain?"

"I can do better than that," Sherlock told him. "I can show you."


	11. The multiverse theory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the large amounts of scientific explanations in this chapter. Most of it is stuff we already know from watching Doctor Who, but certain characters needed to know certain things about certain subjects. There is some action at the end though.

The two men stepped through a large set of double doors. Doyle sucked in a breath, gazing upwards at the large room he found themself in.

The room was shaped and furnished similarly to the console room, with round, orange-gold walls and coral struts. Looking around, Doyle could see many levels of metal floors stretching up to the heavens, and to further than he could see down below. All the levels were connected by a single spiral staircase which seemed to go on forever.

But the most remarkable thing about the room was not the size. It was the fact that every single floor was lined with rows upon rows of wooden bookshelves, each stuffed full of books. The shelves were surrounded by even more books, overflowing onto the ground and every perceivable surface. In the middle of the floors there sat several armchairs, sofas, large cushions, and other such comfortable places to sit, so that one could read the thousands upon thousands of books which stood upon the many bookshelves.

Despite the metal walls and floors, the whole space had a relaxed, cosy atmosphere, an effect which was helped by the noise of a crackling fireplace somewhere in the background, probably on another level.

Doyle walked over to the closest bookshelf, running his fingers gently along the row of leather-bound spines. He noticed that the titles of the books seemed to be in several languages, some of which he was certain were not from Earth.

He turned back to Sherlock. "This is amazing," he breathed, still marvelling at the sheer expanse of the space. "This must surely contain every book in the universe!"

"I doubt it, somehow," Sherlock said, moving away from the door towards the staircase in the middle of the room. "But it certainly has a lot of them."

Doyle managed to tear himself away from the bookshelf to join Sherlock by the staircase. "You said you could show me different universes?" he asked.

"I said I could show you the multiverse theory," Sherlock corrected him. "Come with me."

He took off up the narrow staircase, taking the stairs two at a time. Doyle's long legs easily kept up with him as they went around and around and around, bypassing many levels on their way up.

Sherlock didn't know for certain where he was going, or indeed if he was going to the right place. But he had a feeling in his heart, the sort he never would have trusted only a few days earlier, but since he had come into contact with the TARDIS he was becoming more open-minded about such things.

Some time after either of them had lost count of the floors, Sherlock stopped. He emerged onto a bookshelf-bordered level which seemed unremarkable when compared to the others, and headed towards a shelf to his left. His fingers wandered along the row of books until he came to a promising-looking one in English. "Here we go," he said, lifting the heavy book off the shelf and carrying it over to a table nearby.

Doyle leaned over Sherlock's shoulder to get a better look at the book. It was called 'The Multiverse Theory in a Nutshell', by a man called J. Harkness.

Sherlock cracked open the front cover and flipped through pages until he found the introduction. He pored over the page, eyes running over the small print until he found what he was looking for. "'In order to understand the theory of multiple universes, you have got to think in five dimensions'," he read out. "'Think of it like this: having no dimensions is a single dot. Just a dot, not going anywhere. One dimension is an infinite row of dots, or a line. Just one line, going infinitely in two dimensions. Two dimensions is an infinite number of lines, which make a plane. And three dimensions is an infinite number of planes, which make space.

"'Now, if you're able to read this book, I imagine you're familiar with three dimensions. It's here that things get a little harder. If each dimension is an infinite number of units of the previous dimension, then the fourth dimension must be an infinite number of spaces, all tacked onto one another, one after the other. This is what we call time. If there was only one space, we would all be stuck, not doing anything. With infinite spaces, we can experience the same space in many different instants, even in one second.

"So four dimensions can explain everything in our universe, right?'" Sherlock scowled a little at the rhetorical questions – he hated those in books – but continued reading. "'But what if we go one further? Imagine an infinite number of spaces, each with an infinite number of times. In other words, an infinite number of universes, all stacked on top of one another. This, my friends, is the fifth-dimensional theory: that our universe is only one of many in existence.

"This can be hard to comprehend, I know, but think about it. Think about where you are in life, and all the little things that had to happen to get you there. All the little coincidences, all the people you had to meet, all the buses you had to catch, to be there now, reading this book. Now imagine what might be different now, if even one of those things hadn't happened. You might be an entirely different person, with different experiences, different memories, different life choices.

"This, my friends, is the basis for the multiverse theory. The theory states that every time you make a decision, another universe is created in which everything is the same up until the moment you made the decision, and you made the other choice. Now, some of the decisions are large ones, like the decision to blow up a country or invade a planet. But some of these choices are much smaller, such as what coloured shoelaces to wear, or whether or not to choose a salad for your lunch.

"Imagine that, if you will. Infinite universe, infinite possibilities. Infinite versions of you, with different heights and races and hair colours and numbers of limbs. The possibilities are quite literally endless. Now, chances are, you're feeling pretty disbelieving right now. And who can blame you? You've picked up this book, and now a man's telling you that there is more of existence than you could ever have imagined. But what if I told you that there is recorded proof of this phenomenon? I wish I could go into more detail, but this is only the introduction. You'll have to read the rest of this book to find out.

"I hope you enjoy the rest of this book, and travel to lots of alternate universes, blah, blah, blah. See you around! By Jack Harkness.'"

Sherlock finished reading and looked up at Doyle. "Infinite universes," the latter breathed, staring back at Sherlock. "Fascinating."

"I agree," Sherlock said. "If it is true, that is."

Doyle said nothing, but took hold of the book from Sherlock and turned it around to face him. He turned to the back of the book, flipping backwards through the pages until he found the index. He quickly scanned the pages until he found the P section. He ran a finger down the column of tiny text until he found the entry he was looking for. "'Proof'," he read out. "There are three options: theoretical, inconclusive, and definitive."

"Difficult choice," Sherlock said dryly.

Doyle nodded, and ran his finger across the page to the number displayed. "Page three hundred and ninety-four," he muttered, turning back to the page in question. "Aha!" he exclaimed, cracking a smile. "I think we have it. 'Definitive proof," he read out loud. "Of the three kinds of proof of the multiverse theory, this is by far my favourite. Coincidentally, it is the one type of proof which is totally ignored by non-believers who would prefer to stay ignorant and in their own universe.

"The most obvious type of definitive proof is, of course, travel between universes. While this is occasionally achieved, it is usually by accident, and is strongly advised against by experts (not that there are many of those around). A memorable instance of trans-universal travel caused the Battle of Canary Wharf on Sol 3 (also known as Earth) in 2007, during which countless humans were murdered as a result of trans-dimensional travel by two alien species.

"It should be noted, however, that this is an isolated case.' Well, that is surely a good sign," Doyle commented. Sherlock raised an eyebrow at him over the book, and he rolled his eyes and kept reading.

"'Other cases include the infamous journeys of Braxos and company between their universe and one that was five years ahead of their own. They reportedly used information from the future universe to become rich and famous in their own universe, until the breach they had made between the universes expanded and almost caused both universes to collapse. After fixing the breach, all members of the company were then imprisoned in the Stormcage facility until their deaths.

"'(For a further discussion on the potential dangers of trans-universal travel, flip on over to page five hundred and three.)' We should look at that as well," Doyle added to Sherlock. "It could be important."

"Good idea," Sherlock nodded. "If alternate universes are involved in this somehow, we should be aware of the risks, if there are any." He took charge of the book from Doyle and turned to page 503. "'Dangers'," he read out. "'Here's the thing about trans-universal travel: it is dangerous. End of story. Whenever a ship, person, object, anything goes from one universe to another, it creates a crack in the surface of the dimension.

"Imagine it as a pane of glass. If you hit a window with something, a tiny fracture might appear. One small crack is manageable. Nothing to worry about, you think. I'll fix it later. But if things keep hitting the window, the crack will get larger and larger as time goes on. More crack will splinter off the first one, bleeding out from the first one like a spider's web. Each hit doesn't seem like much, but they all contribute to the larger cracks. And eventually, the whole window will shatter in thousands of pieces. Then it's gone, and you need to buy either a new window or be cold.

"That's what travelling between universes is like. It was never meant to happen, so every time someone travels between two universes, it put a crack in the barrier between them, which gets larger and larger until eventually both of them crumble into the Void. You can't just go and buy yourself a new universe. Not easily, anyway.

"Now, you may be wondering what the Void is. The answer is simple: it is nothing. Imagine all universes in existence as being stacked on top of one another, like an infinitely large stack of pancakes. The space between the universes, like the syrup or butter between the pancakes, is often known as the Void. Some species call it Hell.

"There is nothing there. Absolutely nothing. No space, no directions, no sense of the passage of time. If a person of any species manages to come back from being in the Void, they will not be the same. End of story. And the idea of oblivion is terrifying to sane people, which is why all species fear the Void, even if they do not properly know about it. Even one person could create a fracture in the barrier between their universe and the Void, and could cause everything to crumble. All the planets, all the creatures, all the stars and black holes and nebulas, would be gone. All the history would be forgotten.

"On a more cheerful note, this is very unlikely to happen. Travel between universes is both uncommon and difficult, and so there is no real danger that you will be crumbling into the Void any time soon. Probably.' That's the end of the chapter."

Sherlock closed the book with a dumbfounded expression. He looked up and locked eyes with Doyle, who was staring right back at him. It would have been evident to anyone watching that both men held the same disregard for personal space, so close together were their faces over the book.

"How would this apply to our situation?" Doyle asked eventually, drawing back and standing upright. "If multiple universes do exist, what does that have to do with us? Why did this machine tell us to look it up?"

"Firstly, it's not strictly a machine, it's a consciousness inside a machine," Sherlock told him, also standing upright. "Secondly, Mr Harkness said that there were infinite possibilities of reality within the universes. What if there is a different universe in which I only exist in books you have written?"

Doyle's eyes began to light up. "And that universe might be the one with which your friends are familiar," he completed. "A totally different universe, which is why they believe you should not exist."

"Exactly!" Sherlock told him. "A universe in which you're famous, and I don't exist. That sounds terrible, to be honest."

"I don't see anything wrong with being famous," Doyle commented. "It sounds quite nice, actually. I might be more successful at writing than I am at ophthalmology in that universe."

"So if they come from that universe," Sherlock continued, "then they must have travelled from that one to ours without realising. Would that be possible?"

"A few hours ago, I would have said that this whole conversation would be impossible," Doyle pointed out.

"Good point."

"More importantly, if they have travelled trans-universally, even without realising it," Doyle said, "surely they will have created a fracture in the barrier between the universes. Which means that…"

"…both universes are damaged," Sherlock finished. "They could both crumble into the Void."

"Inevitable oblivion," Doyle said quietly.

"We should warn them," Sherlock said suddenly, dashing towards the staircase in the centre of the room. Doyle picked up the large book and tucked it under his arm, before following Sherlock, his long legs easily keeping up with the detective's pace.

-o0o-

John and Harry hurried through the round door, guns at the ready, to find themselves in an empty corridor.

Harry froze, frowning. She exchanged a bemused glance with John. "This is definitely the right door?" she whispered.

"I'm sure it was," he whispered back, turning around to look at the door they had just come through. Sure enough, it was scorched and battle-worn on this side, and there was a small dent on one side.

"There was supposed to be a room on this side," she told him. "Even on the ship's plan, this door led to a storage room."

"I know," he murmured, squinting down the corridor both ways. "Where are all the Daleks?"

"I don't know," Harry muttered. "And I really don't like not knowing."

"Why are we whispering?" John asked.

Harry blinked. She straightened up out of the guarded position she had been standing in. "No idea," she said at normal volume. She pointed to the right with her gun. "Shall we go, then?"

"May as well," he nodded.

They set off down the corridor together, keeping in step the way they always did. They chose corners at random, pointing around them with their guns beforehand. There was no specific path they were following.

As they walked, John became more and more uneasy. The corridor hadn't been on the plan at all, and neither had the adjacent corridors they were now going down. He was sure they were walking into a trap. Of course, he had known before that they were going into a trap, but they had thought that it was behind the damaged door. Now he knew there was a trap, but they didn't know where it was, which made him all the more anxious.

Harry, meanwhile, was thinking about the Doctor. Goodness knew where he was, and what the Daleks had done to him, if he was even still alive. The last thing she remembered of the Daleks, before the Doctor had stopped the war, was watching her mother get killed. She remembered how her mother's face had lit up when she saw Harry from her hiding spot, and had begun to stand up and stretch her arms out towards her. She remembered seeing a Dalek appear, seemingly from nowhere, behind her mother, gun aimed and ready.

Harry didn't even have time to shout a warning before the Dalek fired, and her mother was lit up from the inside. She had shot at the Dalek before her mother had hit the ground.

It had been at that moment that the Doctor appeared, knackered old TARDIS wheezing into existence beside her. It had taken him only a moment to assess the situation, and another to properly register that his wife was dead.

Harry had watched as her father ran over to the body of her mother, picking up her shoulders and gently cradling her to him as he sobbed. Had it been anybody else, they would have simply regenerated and kept fighting; but it was their mother's final life. She had lived for a long time, thirteen very full lives; but it still wasn't fair, to have her last life cut off so abruptly.

John had joined Harry at that moment, slipping his hand into hers as they watched their father grieve. They both had tears in their eyes, but neither let themselves begin to cry. Instead, they bottled up their emotions like always, ready to take it out on the Daleks later.

Quite some time later, the Doctor had risen from his knees, carrying the body of his wife. He had shakily walked towards John and Harry, who silently parted to let him through into his TARDIS. Inside, he had laid her body on the floor and flown away to a safe location. As a family, they had tied their wife and mother to a pyre made of local wood, and set fire to it. They stood, shoulder to shoulder, and watched silently as the flames consumed her.

They had waited until the entire pyre had been reduced to ash before they turned and headed towards the TARDIS. It was then that their father had taken them to Appalappachia and left them there to go and stop the Time War.

It had been nearly a century before Harry had seen either of her remaining family again after her mother's death. He had had a new face and a new TARDIS interior, and did not mention his late wife even once during his time with Harry. She supposed he must have gotten over her, although she did not really believe that he could.

Now, walking through the Dalek ship with John, Harry noticed that she had tears in her eyes once again. She did not let, squeezing her eyes closed for a moment and bottling up her emotions. They could be used on the Daleks, if and when they ever found them.


End file.
